The Girl Before (TV), A Review

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Based on the book of the same name, The Girl Before follows Jane (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a woman who has recently gone through a miscarriage and is still suffering after the fact, blaming herself for not knowing something was wrong. Looking to start fresh Jane comes across 1 Folgate Street, an ultramodern and minimalistic living space, recently designed by famed architect Edward (David Oyelowo) who has a very specific set of instructions for anyone living there. For starters any potential tenants must fill in a lengthy questionnaire and adhere to a strict set of rules, including no clutter on the ground, no children and no mess of any kind. Despite its oddities Jane sends in an application and is soon accepted, moving in straight away. With her new home and a relationship with Edward blossoming, things seem to be going well for Jane until she learns about Emma (Jessica Plummer).

Three years prior Emma and her boyfriend Simon (Ben Hardy) also moved into 1 Folgate Street but months later Emma was found dead at the bottom of the stairs, with her death still being considered suspicious. Realising that the girl before her may have been murdered, Jane starts digging into Edwards past as well as the house itself and is shocked by what she learns. Did Edward really kill Emma or was her recent burglary and sexual assault all too much for her? Something happened to Emma all those years ago but what? And is the same thing about to happen to Jane as well?

Adaptation wise The Girl Before worked well and the team behind the series (including Delaney himself) obviously paid close attention to the book and its many details. The set design and general appearance of Folgate Street was wonderfully done and the casting was great too. It’s been a while since I actually read the book so I can’t remember if every single detail was included but on the whole this was a very decent adaptation and I hope we get to see more of Delaney’s work on the screen in the future.

Similar to in the book the house itself almost feels like its own character and this is translated wonderfully onto the screen. 1 Folgate Street looked so similar to how I’d originally imagined from Delaney’s description and some serious props need to go out to the set designers, it was visually amazing. The minimalistic style was presented wonderfully, and the cool and dark appearance of the house really added to the overall drama and tension the built through the four episodes. Everything about the house was perfect, as it should be, but through Jane’s eyes we later learned that the house has a dark history and sometimes perfection comes at a price. Knowing that Emma was murdered there really created this feeling of unease and I think the set design really contributed to this, the house had this dark feeling and it was simultaneously somewhere I’d love to live somewhere I’d never want to step foot in.

I really liked how the series was shot, often combining Jane and Emma’s scenes by having them be in the same area but obviously out of shot of each other to represent the passage of time. A lot of the time David would be talking to Emma and then have the exact same conversation with Jane, with the cameras switching between the two to showcase how similar to the two situations where. The fact that two actresses looked so similar also added to this effect, really hitting hard on David’s obsession as well as Jane’s increasing sense of danger. In the book we got alternating POV chapters between the two women but here it really felt like things were running parallel, with the two women living in the exact same lives at the exact same time, it was very cleverly done.

Overall I really enjoyed this TV adaptation of The Girl Before. I loved the book when I first read it, with it definitely being my favourite of Delaney’s four novels. The characters and set design just came to life and were exactly as I imagined, it was some truly brilliant work. The way the story was shot was also clever, often using Jane and Emma in the same scene to hammer home the similarties of the two situations, I really enjoyed it.