A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder: At The Movies With Kasey
You know what goes great with the string of rainy days we’ve had? Murder mysteries. On Netflix, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder follows a modern Nancy Drew, and on Hulu At Witt’s End picks up a cold case from the mid-90s.
In A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, brilliant Pip (Emma Myers) decides to investigate a local mystery for a school capstone project. Five years before, Andie Bell (India Lillie Davies) went missing and was presumed murdered by her boyfriend after he committed suicide. Pip has her doubts that he was guilty and, with the help of his brother, Ravi (Zain Iqbal), she starts to dig into what really happened. As news of her sleuthing gets around, Pip faces increasing, sometimes dangerous, pushback.
I enjoyed the Holly Jackson novel this series is based on, but I did not remember the plot well, so I was excited to see the show arrive on Netflix. Then, the first three episodes of a six-part series felt like a slog. I wished that the tone would have either veered more toward Nancy Drew or Veronica Mars. Instead, it seems to have dropped a Nancy Drew-like character into Veronica Mars territory, by which I mean Pip is sweet and naive but the mystery takes her to some dark places without her having much bite to her investigation. Sure, she drives her car too fast as Nancy Drew does, but I wanted more internal monologue, hardboiled tendencies, or something. Eventually, the investigation picked up and I was hooked, but it was an endeavor getting to that point.
As Pip, Emma Myers has a strong presence on the screen and infuses her character with a sweet but smart drive. I could sympathize with how Pip gets in over her head as Myers carries on with wide-eyed determination. She has solid chemistry with her costars, especially Zain Iqbal as Ravi, and Anna Maxwell Martin and Gary Beadle, who play her parents. Asha Banks and Yasmin Al-Khudhairi counter Myers’s sweetness by playing her friends with a sad, knowing mood and I wish their characters had been better developed.
This series was originally a BBC show and I know the BBC can do better mysteries than this. The production’s tone is more muted than it should have been, from the color scheme being dialed down to the bad guys just not seeming bad enough. I was most outraged by a dog’s death, which might say something about me, but I think is also telling about the pacing and writing. This show is fine. It could have been great if it had been a bit punchier from the start, but if you are in the mood for a teen detective story, it will pass.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder was created by Poppy Cogan, based on the novel by Holly Jackson. It runs for six episodes on Netflix.
If you’re more interested in a true cold case story, ABC News and Hulu have a new four-part docuseries, At Witt’s End: The Hunt for a Killer, which focuses on the still-unsolved murder of Melissa Witt. 19-year-old Witt’s body was found in Ozark National Forest in January 1995. At Witt’s End details the known facts of Witt’s case, using archival news footage and interviews with journalists and investigators who were on the scene thirty years ago, before transitioning to following a cold case team invested in tying the murder to a serial killer active in the area at the time.
After the big true crime boom a few years ago, I mostly have tuned out of the genre. Although I love a good mystery and quality true crime productions, so many series came out at once that they started to all feel the same and I started to feel a bit gross watching some of them. At Witt’s End demonstrates many of the best practices of the genre and features a production quality that sets it above the lower-brow iterations. Although the content is at times disturbing, the interview subjects and journalistic angle treat the victims and their families with respect, emphasizing the investigators’ empathy and desire to give Melissa the justice that she deserves. Particularly in the last episode, the perspectives of those close to the case give the series a moving conclusion, even as I hope someday there will be an update breaking the case open.
Some may find the series slow-moving and there were probably more drone shots with on-screen text than needed, but I found that these cinematic choices helped create a melancholy, frustrated pace that reflects the difficulty of solving Witt’s case. While not as salacious as some true crime shows can be, At Witt’s End does have some shocking moments and several interviews that feel like a fireside storytelling session.
At Witt’s End is an ABC News production and runs for four episodes on Hulu. Viewer discretion is advised.
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