A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder Review: Emma Myers Is Lil Ms Sherlock
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
There’s a thin line between being daring and dumb, and protagonist Pippa Fitz-Amobi often dangles between the two while playing a teen investigator into a murder case that’s been closed for five years. If you’re into fiction books, particularly YA thrillers, you probably already know about “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” by Holly Jackson from either GoodReads or the book-ish circles of social media, maybe you’ve even read it. The live-action adaptation of the book by Netflix stars Emma Myers as Pippa Fitz-Amobi, a busybody teen who (as part of an individual school project) decides to investigate the case of Andie Bell (India Lillie Davies), a schoolgirl believed to have been murdered by her jealous boyfriend Sal Singh (Rahul Pattni). But someone doesn’t want Andie to go digging into the case and sends her threatening notes and messages…
Emma Myers shot to fame with her supporting role in “Wednesday”, where she plays Enid Sinclair, the cheery, bubblegum cute roommate to Jenna Ortega’s gothic Wednesday Addams. In “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder”, Emma as Pippa isn’t as sunny, but she entertainingly shoulders the show as little miss Sherlock Holmes, keen to find out what really happened to her senior Andie Bell. Andie first went missing and then was presumed dead when her boyfriend allegedly confessed to her murder and killed himself, but her body was never found.
The petite Emma Myers looks every bit a curious, endearing teenager, who’s obsessed with wanting to prove Sal Singh couldn’t have murdered Andie and that there’s more to the case than meets the eye. She teams up with Sal’s brother Ravi Singh (Zain Iqbal) to find out the truth, and sometimes, her BFF Cara Ward (Asha Banks) helps out too. Most of the adults do not take Pippa’s efforts too seriously, but there are others who are seriously rattled by the teenager stirring things up about a murder everybody wants to put behind. The new lists of suspects include Andie Bell’s closest friends, two other ex-boyfriends, and a surprising few others.
The best bit about “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” is its scenic cinematography, the six-episode series looks like a bright summer-romance, even though it progressively gets darker in themes. The story is set in a fictional English town called Little Kilton, and the series was filmed around different parts of England, Pippa’s town looks like what a Jane Austen love story would look like if it was set in the 2020s. Some scene compositions look like they could belong to a Wes Anderson film. There’s a lot of gorgeous panoramic shots of the woods, mountains, and the town that’s dotted with charming colorful buildings. From camping in the woods, to attending secret raves, Pippa and her friends go on quite a few adventures to solve her ‘case’.
I found Emma Myers to be absolutely endearing as the ‘good girl’ Pippa, who is supposed to be a brilliant student, but often does dumb things to gather clues in the Andie Bell case, like breaking into the Bell family home in broad-daylight. “A brown guy breaking into a white person’s house isn’t a good look,” Ravi tells Pippa and chooses to do guard duty for her. Emma’s Pippa swings between a feisty, determined, cat out to get the mouse, and a silly mouse just walking into a dangerous trap. And due to Emma’s youthful looks, you never get to forget that her character is still a naive kid, who easily gets swayed by events around her (emotionally).
With multiple suspects and new clues that even the cops couldn’t find, Pippa’s investigation becomes serious and dangerous, leading to some interesting twists in “A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder.” While some of the twists feel a bit too convenient and constructed specifically for the protagonist, this six-episode Netflix series remains quite binge-worthy.
Stream the series on Netflix.
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