The Bletchley Circle (2012- 2014) and The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco (2018 - current)

In season 2 of Agent Carter episode 4 "Smoke and Mirrors" we see some of Peggy Carter's life before the events of Captain America: The First Avenger.  She's engaged to be married and breaking codes at Bletchley House.  She gets the offer to join SOE (Special Operations Executive) an offer she originally refuses but eventually takes ending her engagement.  The rest for her is history, working with SSR and later SHIELD.

Airing before Agent Carter on BBC, The Bletchley Circle shows us what Peggy Carter's life might have been like had she not taken the SOE job - a civilian life as a housewife who can't even tell her husband what she did in the war.

This is the case for Susan Gray (Anna Maxwell-Martin who played Elizabeth Darcy in Death Comes to Pemberley).  It's 1952 and she's following a series of murders in the news and notices that the killer has a pattern but there is a gap, possibly a missing vicitim.

Her husband served with a Scotland Yard Commissioner and he gets her an interview.  While she can't reveal her history, the commissioner is able to guess at her history.   The police search where her pattern suggests the body may be but they come up empty handed. But Susan can't leave it alone and calls in several of her old colleagues from Bletchley House to help her.  Lucy (Sophie Rundle), Jean McBrian (Julie Graham) and Millie Harcourt (Rachel Stirling) all pitch in and help solve the mystery.  This mystery is the three episode first season.

The second season  of four episodes has the circle working to clear Alice Merren, another Bletchley alum, from a murder charge at the end of that case Susan leaves to join her husband in the Foreign Service.  Alice then joins the circle for their next mystery when Millie is kidnapped.

The show was then revived for an American spinoff - with Jean and Millie heading to San Francisco when they hear about a murder in that city that has several similiarities to a murder during their Bletchley days.  In San Francisco, they track down some of their American counterparts from the Presidio, Iris Bearden (Crystal Balint) and Hailey Yarner (Chanelle Peloso) and try to find the killer.  The eight episodes had the new circle solving four cases.  Reportedly we are getting a new season this year.

I'd heard of both shows but when they originally aired, I must have missed them.  But I decided to watch them when they turned up on Netflix and enjoyed both shows.

Rachel Stirling's Millie Harcourt  was a standout for me reminding me somewhat of Miss Fisher.  I thought that the actress looked familiar but couldn't find anything in her filmography that I had seen but was pleasantly surprised to find that she was the daughter of Dame Diana Rigg, Mrs Peel herself.

I'm glad this turned up on Netflix and was an enjoyable watch,  I found that San Francisco could get a little preachy but I still look forward to further seasons, who knows maybe they can get Hayley Atwell for a cameo.

The Blake Mysteries:Ghost Stories (aka New Beginnings) 2018

I am a huge fan of The Doctor Blake Mysteries which aired on the ABC from 2013 to 2017.  It starred Craig McLachlan as Dr Lucien Blake, a police surgeon in Ballarat in the 1950s.  Blake was a WWII veteran who was very good at solving mysteries.

It rated quite well but the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) decided to cancel the series in 2017.  (Just as they did with Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries - although that may have been more because Essie Davis was getting more international work Game of Thrones)

But there was good news Channel 7 was going to continue the series (as well as a Miss Fisher Spinoff Miss Fisher's MODern Mysteries featuring Phyrnne Fisher's niece).

Then Craig McLachlan got caught up in #metoo and one of his co-stars from the Rocky Horror Picture Show stage production accused him of inappropriate behaviour.  McLachlan is fighting the charges and suing for defamtion  but it put a pall over the revival of Dr Blake and he bowed out.

From what I read everyone was ready to start filming casting had happened and the decision was made to make Dr Blake's new wife and former housekeeper Jean the focus of the TV movie.

Which raises the question, could the series work without the "great detective" Dr Lucien Blake.   Could you make Monk without Tony Shaloub as Adrian Monk, Elementary without Jonny Lee Miller or The Mentalist without Simon Baker?

The Blake Mysteries does work in a way because Lucien's absence is part of the show and the characters step up and take on some of the roles that Lucien would have taken.  Lucien's old colleague Dr Alice Harvey has been appointed the new police surgeon and she now takes the lead on autopsies and forensic investigations that Lucien Blake would have taken, his wife Jean effectively becomes Lucien butting into police cases,  Jean however feels more Jessica Fletcher just happening to be on the scene of this murder rather than Lucien's Quincy MD style of investigation.


It ultimatly works and I hope we get an explantion as to what happened to Dr Lucien Blake,  if McLachlan does return it my make for an interesting new direction for the show either as rival detectives or as a Nick and Nora style couple detectives.