The Bletchley Circle - series 2, epsode 2

[shallowness]

Oh, SUSAN! When I muttered ‘Get a grip of yourself’ at the first ad break, this isn’t quite what I meant. Not breaking up the circle and going, even though I approve of her telling Timothy (I’ve always wanted them to work out, just for him to have more of a clue about how wonderful she is) and not sending the children (so young!) to boarding school. Did the fresh start have to be so drastic, though? I was, perhaps, in denial when Timothy mentioned a foreign posting.

Does Anna Maxwell Martin not like reprising parts or something? Or was it purely a storytelling choice?

Because while Alice and her similar enough skillset is now bound to the others for saving her life, the only one she has a direct history with is Jean. She only knows Lucy as she is now, for instance. There’s nothing like Millie and Susan’s friendship between them, and I don’t know if they’ve thought of how having someone who’s been quietly acquitted of murder (although her heartbreak over her lover and developing relationship with her strangely shorter daughter are juicy dramatically) is going to affect the investigating. I also don’t want the new girl to overtake the established characters, but the way that the tension didn’t lapse when Susan wasn't in this episode was promising.

I should have seen it coming, but I was tense for Susan at the hospital, in part because we’d seen the doctor who was in on it there, not the other three, and then the scientist shot Jean and picked on Lucy as the youngest. I liked that the he was shown as having been eaten up by his own paranoia and need for an enemy to justify what he was doing.

I did start thinking the actress playing Alice (whom I only know from the Andrew Davies Sense and Sensibility adaptation) is too posh for the backstory she’s been given of not being posh enough for Richards’s family.

Lucy should have Ben’s job. Hopefully, Millie will be back in post. And will we see much of (understandably) surly teen Lizzie?

I’m disappointed, because Susan was my favourite, but not without optimism that the show will continue to be good – although losing the one who was the married mother of two in respectable suburbia may mean that they lose the most obvious source of tension. Sure, the 1950s patriarchy will provide many ways of patronising, underestimating and frustrating our heroines, but no longer in the domestic circle, it looks like.

I wish there was such a thing as a The Bletchley Circle fandom for me to find out what people make of the development in this episode.

Also, for those, like me, who were wondering about this, Den of Geek found out that Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD isn’t returning to UK screens until March.