Netflix’s latest murder mystery series, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, has it all: a gripping “who done it” mystery, adorable romance, twists and turns, and of course, an incredibly cool town where all of the action seems to unfold. Watching the show, viewers caught glimpses of the quaint town of Little Kilton, which is sadly fictional. However, the filming location for the series is very much real!
AGGGTM was filmed in Axbridge in Somerset, England, AKA Little Kilton, during the summer of 2023. The show’s cast and crew wanted nothing more than to bring Little Kilton to life and settled on Axbridge since it closely resembled the fictional town in the book. “We were keen to shoot the show on location and to shoot it in the summer,” executive producer Frith Tiplady told the Production Guild. “We tried to find a version of Little Kilton which reflects the atmosphere in the book and the screenplay. What was important to us was a town that is not too small and not too big, the right size for the correct amount of suspects.”
Zain Iqbal, who plays Ravi AKA Pip’s co-detective, added, “The way they changed the town of Axbridge to become Little Kilton was incredible. It’s a little square, where they changed all the shop signs, they put up the full mural [of Andie].”
Both Emma Myers, who plays 17-year-old detective Pip Fitz-Amobi, and director Dolly Wells described Little Kilton as a “chocolate box village,” which was believed to be essential for the show’s aesthetic, tone, and creating a seemingly perfect town with unexpected, dark secrets.
“You want Little Kilton to seem perfect on the surface,” Wells said. “We chose a town that when you come through the main high street, it twists and turns, and the houses are very bright colors, but it is surrounded by very woody hills.”
For Myers, using a small, close-knit town like Little Kilton set the stage for Andie Bell’s unexpected murder and the secrets that came with her death. “It’s a very strange setting for a very mysterious and taboo murder, but that makes it more interesting,” Myers said. “There is this small community, where everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows each other’s business and yet, something tragic has happened that is shrouded in mystery it seems. It is a fascinating setting for a drama.”
Wells shared that the town has to “seem really pretty, but must have this feeling of the woods surrounding it, of nature encroaching in this rather dark, menacing way”. Screenwriter and executive producer Poppy Cogan praised Wells’s “amazing eye,” stating that “She did such a great job creating a world that feels quintessentially English but with a twist; a picture-perfect town with a dark underbelly.”
BRB, adding “visit Axbridge” to my bucket list.