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Posted in: BBC, Netflix, TV | Tagged: a good girl's guide to murder, bbc, bbc three, murder mystery, netflix, streaming, YA fiction
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder Author Addresses TV Adapt Changes
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder author Holly Jackson diplomatically discusses the attempts to keep the TV adaptation faithful to her book.
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder has been a hit on BBC Three in the UK, the broadcaster's youth-oriented channel, and will debut on Netflix this week. Adapted from the first of Holly Jackson's bestselling trilogy of YA murder mysteries, the series follows a high schooler who decides to make a true crime podcast investigating the unsolved murder of one of her schoolmates and, guess what, uncovers lots of secrets in her town. As with every book adaptation, there were changes, some of which book fans were not happy with. Jackson spoke with Variety and had diplomatic but surprisingly candid remarks about the changes.
"A Good Girl's Guide to Murder": From Book to Screen
"I was very heavily involved in the show. I was doing script notes throughout. I was basically the whole of last year working 24/7 on the show. The show is literally unrecognizable because of my input. If I hadn't interfered — I say interfered, I should use a better word — if I hadn't offered my sage advice and guidance and butted in, the show wouldn't look the way it is today. I'm proud of the show that we've made, but ultimately, I wasn't the one writing it. I made lots of suggestions and I said things that I thought would be really important to book fans, that they would feel betrayed if they weren't there. And ultimately, it wasn't my decision. So I sympathize entirely with book fans who wanted to see their favorite moments. And you know, I have such a close interaction with the readership that I already knew."
"I think we got the balance pretty right. I mean, sometimes I think it's tough that with an adaptation, it's almost like you can't please a book fan entirely because a show can't live up to the great expanse of their imagination. So I think I expected a little bit of "Oh, the book's much better," which, you know, is also great for me because the book is mine too. But I'm very aware of that and I was aware before the show came out. I kind of predicted which items people would be upset not to see. So, I'm seeing it as a positive that if we are able to make more of the show, I feel like now I know exactly what to do to keep book readers happy whilst at the same time keeping new viewers in mind, which is a tricky balance sometimes."
"A Good Girl's Guide to Murder" Had… Issues With the Pilot Script
"I got sent a pilot out of the blue. And it wasn't what I wanted it to be, and we kind of went back and forth on the pilot. I think by that point, the production company I was working with realized that there was value in having me more heavily involved because my ideas were good. We worked back and forth a lot. Sometimes, there is the feeling of like, "Oh, I wish I could just write scripts myself." But it's not just myself and Poppy, there's all the producers, there's our broadcasters. It takes not just a village, it takes like an entire continent of people to make a TV show. But I think where we ended up is a good place. And I think I think everyone involved can be proud of the show that we've come up with in the end.
On Pulling Back Unnecessary Changes
Jackson had remarks about too many changes in the original script she was sent that veer too far from her book: "It wasn't an adaptation of the book, really. It was far too different. Like, characters made up didn't follow the book at all — I just made it very clear at that point that if they weren't going to adapt the book as an adaptation, I could take it elsewhere. Because by this point, we were in a very different position. I sold the option to them before the book came out, and then by this point, the book had been a bestseller in America and the U.K., and we were constantly fielding approaches from other production companies who wanted to make the show. So I think it put me in a position where I could say, we have to do this right, and you have to do this right, or we'll do it with someone else who will do it right. After that, we were able to clear the slate and say, Okay, we've got to go much closer to the book. Book fans don't even know what could have been, what I saved them from!"
Why Do Productions Keep Changing the Book?
It's hard to know why a production would drastically change the material from a book when adapting it to screen, especially when there's already a large fandom that wants to see a faithful translation of what they loved in the books. It could be any reason: the adapter thought this made it "better," the adapter wanted to change it out of their own ego, to impose new ideas so they can claim ownership of the story, or the producer and scriptwriter thought the changes would get the series greenlit. Sometimes, the changes are good, but sometimes, they strip the main appeal of the original story (we're looking at you, Netflix's series of The Witcher!). At least A Good Girl's Guide to Murder got lucky because Jackson had enough clout to make herself heard and steer the TV series closer to the book for the sake of keeping the fans onboard.
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder starts streaming on Netflix on August 1st.
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