Recommendations: Week of 8/5/24

We have some murders to solve

You can solve a murder in the summer; it’s surely been done. But for some reason, the weather often seems more autumnal in television murder mysteries. It’s one of the things that made Misdsommer Murders so strikingly incongruous; the flowers would be blooming outside a cozy church in the Cotswolds or something but inside, murder most foul. Of course, with some notable exceptions, it can be quite difficult to determine exactly what season it is in the merry British Isles. In Ireland, especially, June can often look like November. So perhaps you aren’t in the mood for my recommendations today, but I certainly am in the mood to pretend it’s a bit cooler, moodier, and more mysterious.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (Netflix): Based on the novel by Holly Jackson, this is a murder mystery mainly in the tradition of Nancy Drew, the Scooby Gang, and related properties. Teenagers who are just a bit different than their peers solving mysteries with relatively low stakes. There are perhaps more stakes in this than in the more blasé Drew books, but we never truly doubt the spunky Pip will have any real trouble making it out of this alive. Her name is Pip, for goodness sake. The novel is aimed at YA audiences and the show retains a similar tone, although the murder in question is fairly adult. Pip is a straight-A student who sometimes seems to want to solve a murder mainly because it would look good on her transcripts, but she gets pulled in deeper due to a personal connection to the crime. A lot of murder mysteries these days fall onto a spectrum between two categories: cozy and horrifying. This lies more closely on the cozy spectrum, but it flirts with going further towards the scarier side of things.

Check this out if you like the whole “not like other girls because I solve murders” vibe.

Bodkin (Netflix): This is honestly a series that was made specifically for my tastes. It is a dark comedy about a a journalist exiled to her hometown in rural Ireland after she gets in trouble with the UK government on her current story. Dove is ordered back to Bodkin, a gap in the road place where they do things like “road bowling” with much enthusiasm. She is also ordered to help her newspaper’s very popular podcasting division on a cold case true crime podcast they are making in the town. Initially totally over it (she’s a real journo, after all, with out much of an affection for the absurd), she gets pulled in deep when she discovers a real crime may have indeed taken place in Bodkin. This is truly delightful.

Watch if you like wry pitch-black Irish humor and making fun of American podcasters.