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How A Good Girl's Guide to Murder was brought from your bookshelf to Netflix & BBC, according to creator Holly Jackson

BBC/Netflix's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is based on a prose novel by Holly Jackson, and she shares how it was to transition it to the small screen.

 

Author Holly Jackson and the core cast of the upcoming BBC Three/Netflix adaptation of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder were recently at London's MCM Comic Con, and among the many stories the team shared was Holly's own perspective on if she knew, back when writing the book, if it was primed for an adaptation.

"As a writer, I refer to myself as a screenwriter trapped in the body of a novelist, just to make it sound dramatic and visceral," joked Jackson. "I very much structure my books like they are films or TV shows, and I don't start writing the first sentence of chapter one until I can run the entire thing like a movie in my head. So I think that's why they read quite cinematic."

Jackson said the process to bring the A Good Girl's Guide to Murder from prose novel to TV series took five years, but the way she structured the book helped ease the way - although that's not to say there weren't some problems to overcome.

"Obviously, there are always hurdles, and a lot of the book is Pip just sitting at her laptop tapping away. That would've been really boring if it was just Emma [typing] the whole time, as good as Emma is," Jackson says, as Emma pantomines typing. "That might not have been the most fun show."

"So, we've had fun being creative and making it something that is an awesome TV show," she concluded.

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder debuts July 1 for those in the UK on BBC Three and the BBC iPlayer, with international airings planned for Netflix and more later in the year.


Chris Arrant

Chris Arrant: Chris Arrant is the Popverse's Editor-in-Chief. He has written about pop culture for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel, Newsarama, CBR, and more. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. (He/him)

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