Last night on television A compelling return for the codebreaking crimebusters
Television is the most prolific serial killer of our time. It just loves to murder. It can’t be stopped, and it’s not particular about its methods. Stabbings and stranglings, slittings and smotherings… there’s no pattern, no signature. If there was, the detectives of The Bletchley Circle would surely have found it.
These women, all former codebreakers at Bletchley Park in the Second World War, arrived on our screens five years ago, and hung around for two series before the drama was cancelled. In the revived spin-off show The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco (ITV), two of their number, Rachael Stirling’s Millie Harcourt and Julie Graham’s Jean Mcbrian, travelled to the West Coast in search of the killer of a former colleague, 14 years earlier.
The set-up was rather tortured: the young woman was strangled at a dance attended by US GIS in 1942, and the perpetrator drew an odd symbol on her palm. Millie, working as a governess to a brattish child of the gentry, chanced upon an article in the San Francisco Chronicle (yes, really) that included a photo of a murder victim with the same symbol on her outstretched hand. Jean was talked into accompanying Millie to the US to investigate. Once there, they were able to make contact with another excodebreaker, now working as a jazz pianist. She brought in one of her former American colleagues, and a new circle was complete. Phew!
Of the new members, Chanelle Peloso’s Hailey Yarner was straining credibility, too. Peloso is 24, so it was quite a feat for the drama to pass her off as part of the war effort, but she’s a tremendously engaging presence (“I like to tinker and I’m damn good at it”), so it wasn’t hard to forgive. Crystal Balint’s Iris Bearden was another interesting choice. African-american women were not allowed to be codebreakers in the US Navy, but they were in the Army (albeit in segregated units). It was great to see this acknowledged.
The remarkable tap dance complete, the plot settled into a compelling murder mystery, with a cliffhanger ending that demanded a return visit. Chris Harvey
Admit it: one of the biggest pleasures of BBC One’s Who Do You Think You Are? is watching an otherwise confident, composed celebrity become incongruously tearful. The format breeds emotive authenticity, and on a similar principle, Boy George was a good choice. How touching to see the mascara-daubed figurehead of the New Romantics pop over to his mother’s, give her a hug, and make tea. George was endearing and honest, but he was also unafraid to lighten the tone with quips. Most importantly, though, he had a good family story.
George had already known that his maternal grandmother, Bridget, was six years old when she was taken in by an industrial convent school in 1919. She had been found wandering the streets of Dublin alone, the tale went, but a historian found that she had in fact been snatched by NSPCC inspectors, whose overzealous attempts to rescue infants from poverty earned them the nickname of “the cruelty men”. The search for more information burped up horror after horror: first the snatching, then the vileness of the nuns’ treatment of the schoolchildren, then the hideousness of the poverty that Bridget had been taken from. The street where she was taken has changed so much that it wasn’t worth filming there, but, as we learned later in the show, the building in which Bridget had lived is still preserved as a tenement museum. It was a stroke of ghoulish luck that we were able to see the cramped, dark room where the family had lived.
George’s late father, Gerry O’dowd, who was volatile and abusive, featured heavily in Cry Salty Tears, the memoir written by Dinah, George’s mother. It would have been interesting to learn about his background, but the show stuck to George’s maternal side where there was more heartbreak, notably in George’s great-uncle, Thomas Bryan. A republican, he had married Bridget’s sister, but was executed four months later for his involvement with a precursor to the IRA. We saw the poignant letter that he wrote from death row to his father-in-law, signed off with a heart-piercing “Cheerio”.
It was stark, sad stuff, but there was levity too. Shown a picture of a small boy whose family were so poor they had nothing but a dress to clothe him in, George quipped, “That would have been me!” The crying game seemed a little less bleak. Tom Ough The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco ★★★ Who Do You Think You Are? ★★★★