Friday, October 4, 2013

The Bletchley Circle

More and more I find myself departing from American TV and transitioning to British TV.  Not an easy task considering that we canceled all of our channels about 2 months ago because we simply weren't using them.  But thanks to the Roku, and therefore Netflix and Amazon streaming, I'm constantly on the hunt for high-quality shows.

Now that I'm done with Lark Rise to Candleford and Cranford, the hubby and I have begun 2 others.  There's Titanic the series--not bad, kind of a backstory to the Harland & Wolff shipyard and its happenings, and The Bletchley Circle.

I've been wanting to see The Bletchley Circle for ages and could never find it.  And, like so many British series, it's more of a mini-series, with only 3 episodes in season one.  Still, it is so good that I even started it from the beginning to include my husband.  I still haven't seen the 3rd episode.

Factually, it addresses Bletchley Park, an estate that was used during WWII as a home base for code-breaking and deciphering.  Many of these brilliant code-breakers were women, like the 4 fictional characters around which the series is based.  The estate still exists today as a museum.

After the war, these women were expected to sign a confidentiality agreement so that no one would think they did more than "clerical work," go back into their traditional roles and become wives and mothers.

The series shows a small blip of their work during the war and then fast-forwards nine years, when a serial killer is terrorizing London and one of the Bletchley women begins to see a pattern in his movements.  At the risk of exposing her wartime secret and alienating her husband, she rounds up 3 of her colleagues from a decade before and attempts to put together clues being overlooked by Scotland Yard.

As soon as I saw the trailer, I knew it would be good, and I was right.  I highly recommend it.  It's available on Amazon streaming, and you may have to pay around $1.99 per episode, but it is worth it. 





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