With relationships feeling like life or death, the violence of puberty is the perfect setting for a murder mystery. Holly Jackson’s small-town sleuth book series A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder is the next teen-crime drama to earn itself a glossy TV makeover. But with such an oversaturated genre, this needed to be more than just another open-and-shut case.

Everyone in the town of Little Kilton has already decided golden girl Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend Sal Singh before he ended his own life. But five years later, straight-A student Pip Fitz-Amobi can’t let it go. When she decides to investigate the case for her final school project, she discovers how secrets can fester in such a small community. 

Emma Myers’ breakout performance in Wednesday as the bubbly werewolf room-mate to Jenna Ortega’s gloomy Adams, proved that she can hold her own next to a certified teen idol. Leading the cast in A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder as Pip, Myers displays star quality without a hint of her usual American accent.

Unfortunately, this can’t be said for the rest of the series which oozes Stateside influences. Pip and her friends go on camping trips unsullied by indecisive British weather, swapping bottles of cider in the park for hard liquor and frat parties. It’s not surprising given this is a British adaptation of an American book series, but it results in a culture clash which removes any sense of place from the setting. 

This also applies to many of the characters as they are forgotten in favour of dramatic montage shots of case boards and quiet country roads. In any good mystery, everyone is a suspect, but this is difficult when by the midway mark you’re still getting the hang of names. For better or worse, A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder demonstrates many of the experiences we all had as a teenager: confusion, an affinity for American culture and total self-obsession. 

A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder episodes are all available on BBC iPlayer from Monday 1 July.