| Genre: | Crime drama |
| Creator: | Dorothy Koomson |
| Director: | Dan Zeff |
| Starring: | Lorraine Burroughs Jodhi May Martin Compston Nicholas Pinnock Georgina Campbell Holli Dempsey Dominique Jackson Bryan Dick |
| Composer: | Samuel Sim |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Num Series: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 3 |
| List Episodes: |
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| Executive Producer: | Andy Harries |
| Producer: | Lucy Dyke James Flynn Ronan Flynn |
| Editor: | Úna Ní Dhonghaíle |
| Location: | Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland |
| Cinematography: | Martin Fuhrer |
| Runtime: | 60 minutes |
| Company: | Left Bank Pictures |
| Channel: | ITV |
The Ice Cream Girls is a three-part British television crime drama, first broadcast in 2013, based on the bestselling novel by Dorothy Koomson.[1] The story follows two vulnerable teenage girls, Serena Gorringe (Lorraine Burroughs) and Poppy Carlisle (Jodhi May), who in the summer of 1995, are accused of murdering their schoolteacher, Marcus Hansley (Martin Compston) after becoming involved in a tryst of violence and sexual abuse. Although Serena is acquitted, Poppy is convicted of murder. In the following years, the two girls lead very different lives - Poppy's family rebuff her, leaving her to serve her prison sentence alone. Serena, however, finds love with university sweetheart Evan (Nicholas Pinnock) and has a daughter, Verity (Dominique Jackson).
But seventeen years later, Poppy and Serena are unexpectedly reunited, and they are forced to confront each other and reveal the truth behind their dark, shared history.[2] The series, broadcast on ITV, was shot in Bray, County Wicklow, which is used to represent the town of Brighton. The series achieved good viewing figures, with the first episode gathering 5.53 million, 4.83 million tuning in for the second episode and 5.18 million for the final episode.[3] Notably, the series has never been released on DVD.
Sam Wollaston of The Guardian said of the first episode, "it shares this with The Poison Tree, too, there's an obviousness to it. An ITV drama-ness about it. It's so consciously trying to be a psychological thriller, not just your bog-standard thriller," and "I'll watch the rest, because it's enthralling enough for me to want to know what happens, or rather what happened. But I won't be lying awake at night thinking about it."[4]