The first two series of The Bletchley Circle were based on a fun conceit: a group of women who forged a friendship and a bond during their time as codebreakers at Bletchley during the war reunited after realising that nothing quite lived up to the sense of importance and satisfaction of helping the country. And because of this, those four women Susan Gray (Anna Maxwell Martin), Millie (Rachael Stirling), Lucy (Sophie Rundle), and Jean McBrian (Julie Graham) provided plenty of good, old-fashioned amateur detective thrills if not from the Golden Age itself, pretty soon afterwards. (As regular readers will know, I’m all over anything set during the war or in the 1950s – I love the aesthetics, I love the period, I love it all.)

Yes, it was always by-the-numbers and you could pretty much guess what was going to happen next, but it was watchable and enjoyable. So it was with a muffled cheer I greeted the news that BBC and ITV joint venture, Britbox, had joined ITV in a co-pro to resurrect the series, this time setting it in San Francisco.

Things started off, though, back in the war. Maxwell Martin and Rundle have left the show, so the story focused on Graham and Stirling’s characters, Millie and Jean. We were introduced to Claire, a passionate young codebreaker who didn’t think too much of the Americans, so much so she withheld some information. Dobbed in by Millie, Jean had no choice but to fire her from Bletchley and banish her to Bristol. Unfortunately, Claire met a sticky end at her final function at Bletchley – a dance. She was found with her throat cut and her tongue cut out (which was revealed a bit later), with a symbol drawn onto her wrist.

Fast forward to 1956. Millie, now a nanny, and Jean, a librarian, suddenly found themselves bored and at a dead-end. That was when Millie saw the article in the newspaper – a killer had struck in San Francisco and the victim had the very same symbol scrawled upon her. Millie saw this as a way out of her dead-end job and inject some life back into her, well, life. The next trick was to persuade Jean.

Jean revealed that she had been in touch with a contemporary based in San Francisco during the war, at The Presidio, called Major Six. So off they went.

Now, once again everything was pretty much by-the-numbers and, frankly, a bit daft. It also looked… well, cheap. Some of the filters used during war scenes to make scenes and characters look 10 years younger were quite extraordinary. There was so much lens flare you’d imagine JJ Abrams frothing at the mouth if he ever saw this. And yet, you still kept watching.

Once they had set up shop in San Fran, Millie and Jean did what they did best – investigate and crack codes. They finally hooked up with Major Six – a jazz musician called Iris (Chrystal Balint) – who, in turn, recruited a young friend, Hailey Yarner (Chanelle Peloso). And do you know what? Iris and Hailey were carbon copies of Susan and Lucy: Iris had a husband and was beginning to get more involved in the case, and keeping secrets from him, while Hailey was a quirky slightly naive ball of energy. Exactly the same as the first two series.

There were also nods to jazz music, the start of civil rights protests and even the Beat generation, which did give it some social context and a bit of visual richness, but it felt so cheaply done it wasn’t a world that you felt you could totally immerse yourself in.

Paul Hirons
@Son_Of_Ray