The Bletchley Circle (2012-2014)

Here’s another strong entry for my collection of female-led TV shows, of a very different sort than Nikita.  With only two seasons and seven episodes (those British, I tell ya,) it was easy to fit in and well worth it.  When I was anticipating The Imitation Game, it definitely scratched my itch for code breakers who are badass and awesome.

The eponymous circle is made of four women whose intelligence and ingenuity saved lives during World War II.  Along with the other bold, brilliant men and women of Bletchley Park, their actions had a real impact on the world.  Now, however, it’s 1952; the war is over and the boys have long since come home.  The women who cracked the codes that moved armies have been expected to quietly pack up everything they were, everything they can do.  Now, their world isn’t meant to extend beyond hearth and home, and they’re meant to know their place in it.

Total lives-of-quiet-desperation situation, right?  That’s where Susan finds herself.  She loves her husband and children, of course, but it doesn’t feel right for them to be her entire life.  When she gets restless, her husband offers up the crossword to pacify her – since her days at Bletchley fall under the Official Secrets Act, he doesn’t begin to imagine how much more her mind longs to do.  Unquenchable, it latches onto news stories about a mysterious rash of killings in London.  Where others only see the tragedy or the grisly details, Susan sees patterns that can reveal information and could even lead the police to the murderer.

But it’s a big puzzle and she’s only seen the pieces of it that made the newspapers and the wireless reports.  It’s 1952, and the wives of respectable civil servants don’t tell the police they’re looking in the wrong place.  When she’s unable to prove her theories to the authorities, Susan enlists the help of her wartime friends and colleagues.  Susan’s gift for recognizing patterns is married to practical Jean’s talent for acquiring buried intel, independent Millie’s flair with maps and numbers, and gentle Lucy’s eidetic memory, and the four women set out to catch a serial killer.  His movements and actions, the backgrounds of the previous victims, and the details of the police and coroner’s reports become codes for them to crack, and they’re amazing.

I’ll admit that the second season isn’t as good as the first.  It has two mysteries rather than one, and neither has as much emphasis on the code-breaking aspect, which makes the show feel a little more like a standard crime procedural.  Granted, it’s still a period piece led entirely by women, so it’s not that standard, but if series 1 is a 10, series 2 is maybe a 7 or 8.

Susan is played with beautiful restraint by Anna Maxwell-Martin, who I mainly know as Sookie in Who’s “The Long Game,” Millie is the exquisite Rachael Stirling from Tipping the Velvet, and series 2 also features Hattie Morahan, who was Elinor in the 2008 Sense and Sensibility.  We also get Steven Robertson (Michael from Rory O’Shea was Here,) and Eighth Doctor Paul McGann makes a brief but important appearance.

Warnings

Violence (including serial killings and domestic violence,) some language, drinking, smoking, sexual content (including assault,) and some seriously dark themes.