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Air Date: 2012
PBS
Season 1: Three forty-four minute episodes
Season 2: Four forty minute episodes
Starring: Anna Maxwell Martin, Rachel Sterling, Julie Graham, and Sophie Rundle
The Bletchley Circle has been on my Netflix list forever and my mom and I finally got around to binge watching it last weekend. We watched season one in a day and season two the next day, because it was that good.
The four women in this show worked together at Bletchley during WWII decoding Nazi messages for Britain. They are all incredibly smart, but now that the war is done, their intelligence is no longer required by the state, and they have had to settle into normal lives in the fifties. One day, one of the women, Susan, (Anna Maxwell Martin) believes she has noticed a pattern in a serial killers killings and goes to the police with her information. When the police don't take her seriously, she enlists the help of her friends from the war to solve the case on her own.
WWII is a really fascinating setting to me, especially in Britain as their experience was so different from America's. I also really loved the all female leads in this show and how fricking smart they were! One of the girls, Lucy the youngest, has a photographic memory and can remember everything she sees or reads and that was a really cool addition to the crime solving dynamic. The actresses are great; I'm really becoming a fan of Anna Maxwell Martin and would love to see her in more things. The mysteries and action were suspenseful and extremely clever.
I really enjoyed this series and can even see myself rewatching it in the future. I'm pretty sure the show will not have a third season, which I'm pretty bummed about, but I highly recommend watching this series. It's so good.
It's also made me super interested in reading some non-fiction about women in the war, so let me know if you have any recommendations.
Glad to see you enjoyed this, Mallory! I love Anna Maxwell Martin - she's a wonderful period drama actress - and I really enjoyed this show, it's such a shame it was cancelled because it was such an interesting part of history when all of these women had had a taste of employment and were expected to go back to housework and motherhood as though nothing had happened. I have no idea if it's any good or not, but there's a book I keep seeing everywhere by Tessa Dunlop called The Bletchley Girls which might be of interest to you? :)
ReplyDeleteOh perfect Jess! Just what I was looking for! I have found a few about women in WWII but they tend to be about pilots and such rather than code breakers and intelligence workers. I will check that out for sure.
DeleteI think it's so interesting that society saw just how efficient and beneficially it was to allow women into the work force and places of intelligence during the war, and then disregarded it the second the men came home.
Thanks for stopping by!
I loved watching this series when it was on PBS! Glad you enjoyed it!
ReplyDeleteIt was a really great mystery series!
DeleteThanks for stopping by!