Hmm, that was short

[shallowness]

The Bletchley Circle: San Fransisco went to suburbia for its second case. Hailey was very lively, while Iris didn’t approve of what was going on there, with their old colleague Lydia acting oddly in a different way to the odd way she’d acted the year before, a friend drinking heavily and being treated roughly by her husband. A few anachronisms.

We already knew Charlotte was going to be dead, but Iris didn’t as she tried reporting the domestic abuse to the police. Grace was the most positive person about the ladies investigating.

Jean was still about, Millie’s cousin was against her staying at his apartment an in the city (my guess was because he was gay and trying to hide it), until he folded, having hurt cousin Camilla a bit along the way.

Query, who’s car was Millie driving when she visited the grieving hubby? As they made such a fuss of driving later.

Hailey was very blasé considering she was investigating a possible murderer.

Archie the bartender was pleased to see Millie!

Lydia’s husband Kenneth was a bit racist and too anxious to prove himself in front of Iris’s soldier husband. But he managed to get out the news that Marcus was being deployed to Vietnam (before Vietnam became America’s war). There was a fair bit of ‘Listen to me because I’m your husband’ ‘Yes, dear (lie)’ going on, emphasising the suffocating nature of 1950s marriages, so maybe Hailey shouldn’t feel such twinges at being single.

Don’t know why they didn’t bring Lydia into the new circle, or tried to bring in Olivia, furtive wannabe coroner, either.

I liked the golfing lines from Jean.

I was left thinking that all the wives are driven mad by suburbia, and just thinking that was bad writing, because of all the daft developments in the case, instead of thinking of it as a clue.

I watched the closing episode live on the same day, when I realised that that last point was significant. I was also suspecting Kenneth, mainly because he was the only character who’d been introduced who hadn’t been suspected who could have done it and, er, he was racist.

Although the women noticed things that the police didn’t and were persuaded by them, Lydia writing her messages in code and then using a metaphor seemed quite lucid...but handily so. Anyway it was something for Iris to decipher, and I liked the way they wove music into how she worked it out.

As for Millie’s triangle. I actually like the detective, because he seems quite competent and smart if hampered by prejudice making them assume wrongly and not investigating widely enough. I wasn’t all that impressed by the amateurs’ approach. Also stop telling everyone about how smart you are and how you kept all these secrets when you forget to keep an eye on the last person who you know is feeling suicidal just after she’s heard her husband is somewhat responsible for her friends’ deaths, as was she.

But back to the triangle, I don’t think the anti-cop feeling was unmixed with jealousy that he was keeping company with Millie, and he was reading her (quite well) and she was forecasting their marriage, probably accurately. I thought he was a bit flippant about it in saying they should dance and everything would be fine (this isn’t a Fred and Ginge musical) although there was something a little hot about the dancing. But I also like the bartender.

Even I know a 9mm is a rubbish gun for hunting. Why didn't he have a rifle? Obviously, J could have shot Jean or any of them, but I thought he’d be scarier with a hunting rifle. I liked that it was being threatened with a gun that made Jean reassess everything and decide to stay – if it gets recommissioned.

I love the look, I’m interested in the themes they’re trying to explore but the plot is always stupid, so if this show is to come back, they need to up their game badly on that front, because it undermines the whole point of the show.

I've also caught up on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Poldark, so I expect my next post will be about them.