Emma Myers as Pip Fitz-Amobi and Zain Iqbal as Ravi Singh in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. COURTESY OF NETFLIX
Netflix renewed A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder for a second season — but what case will Pip be investigating next?
The streaming service announced on Wednesday, November 20, that season 2 of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is officially being developed just three months after the show premiered. Emma Myers and Zain Iqbal are expected to return for the second installment.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is based on the book series by Holly Jackson. Season 1, which debuted in August, centered around a teenager named Pip (Myers) who took it upon herself to solve a case where a local school girl was seemingly murdered by her boyfriend before he died by suicide. Pip’s interest in true crime guided her — as did the brother of the alleged killer.
“A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is like a mashup of Booksmart, Veronica Mars and the podcast ‘Serial.’ It’s a proper whodunit, with a brilliant mystery at its heart but it’s also a mixture of genres,” screenwriter Poppy Cogan told the BBC in June about the show. “There’s lightness and comedy, but as the series progresses, it cranks up to an exciting thriller, there are even flashes of horror. It’s got a bit of everything.”
Cogan admitted that there were challenges when creating the show, adding, “Part of the charm of the book is that it is written in quite a graphic style. It has interview transcripts, typed up notes, handwritten post-its, which give the book a fun visual feel. Of course, we needed to find a different way to get the information across on the screen, everything needed to come to life. Another big challenge was working out what we should leave out.”
While the TV show stuck closely to story lines introduced in the books, there were still a few changes that fans of the series noticed. The 2019 novel A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder inspired season 1, leaving sequels Good Girl, Bad Blood, As Good As Dead and Kill Joy to potentially be adapted next.
“What has always been most important to me throughout this adaptation process is to stay loyal to the source material and make sure it adheres to the spirit of the book, as I know that that’s what readers truly want to see,” Jackson shared with the BBC. “I’m really excited for everyone to see the characters and scenes they already love, and some new surprises too.”
Jackson went on to explain how she went about recreating her vision for the small screen.
“I think the reason that A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder lends itself so well to a TV show is because the book is cinematic. I don’t start writing until I know every single beat and scene and can run the plot like a movie in my head. I think that’s why so many readers have been clamoring for an adaptation since the start,” she said. “So, in a way, it felt like quite a natural translation to turn A Good Girl’s Guide book into the TV show, with all the big set piece scenes readers will recognize from the book, and new scenes or existing scenes envisioned in a new way to fit the visual medium.”
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She continued: “I know readers are very protective and want to see a faithful adaptation. I have made sure — wherever I was able — that the show stays true to the books, because I owe my readers everything and want them to love this adaptation as much as the books.”
Season 2 will likely take inspiration from Good Girl, Bad Blood, which picks up as Pip’s podcast gains popularity. Pip is determined not to take on another case after nearly getting killed, but she changes her mind when her friend Connor asks for help finding his missing brother, Jamie. When the police take no action, Pip gets involved because she is worried Jamie was kidnapped. As Pip digs into Jamie’s past, she connects his disappearance to a dangerous criminal ring involved in drug and human trafficking.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is currently streaming on Netflix.
