Will Ferrell-produced series The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window arrives on Netflix on Friday, starring Kristen Bell as a lonely woman who thinks she’s witnessed a murder and takes the investigation into her own hands when no one believes her.
With a stellar cast which features the likes of Michael Ealy, Tom Riley, Cameron Britton, Shelley Hennig and a “big juicy cameo at the end” according to Bell, The Woman in the House is an eight-part satire bearing similarities to other well-known thrillers with similar titles – but is it based on a book?
Read on for everything you need to know about the inspiration behind The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window and whether it’s adapted from a novel.
Is The Woman in the House adapted from a book?
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The upcoming Netflix series was not adapted from a book of the same name, but created by Mike Tyson Mysteries writers Rachel Ramras, Hugh Davidson and Larry Dorf.
If the comedy thriller is giving you deja vu however, there’s good reason for that. The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is a parody of a particular sub-genre of thriller – those which focus on a female lead who is convinced they’ve witnessed a murder.
These include 2016’s The Girl on the Train – the film starring Emily Blunt as a lonely alcoholic who believes something terrible has happened to her neighbour – as well as the similarly titled 2021 film The Woman in the Window, starring Amy Adams as an agoraphobic divorcee who thinks she watched the murder of her neighbour via her living room window.
Both films are based on books of the same name and seem to be the main inspiration for The Woman in the House – with Kristen Bell’s Anna being a divorced, alcoholic artist with a phobia of the rain who thinks she’s seen a murder take place in her neighbour’s house.
The series also bears similarities to other recent psychological thrillers like The Flight Attendant, in which Kaley Cuoco stars as an alcoholic flight attendant who wakes up in a hotel room to find the man she had slept with the night before murdered and sets about trying to find out what happened, as well as films like Gone Girl and Vertigo.
The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window arrives on Netflix on Friday, January 28th.
Check out our lists of the best series on Netflix and the best movies on Netflix, or see what else is on with our TV Guide.