‘I’ve got a huge admiration for that generation of women’

With The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco set to return to our screens, Georgia Humphreys meets its star Julie Graham

In a time when there is a push for more female-led shows, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco is a shining example.

The original series, titled The Bletchley Circle, aired between 2012 and 2014, and saw a group of remarkable women, who were secret code-breakers during the Second World War, turn their skills to solving crimes.

Then came the Golden City-set spin off, the first four episodes of which aired last summer. It follows two cast members, Jean (played by Julie Graham) and Millie (played by Rachael Stirling), as they move across the pond, after reading about a string of murders that share grisly similarities to the death of an old friend.

They team up with Iris and Hailey – women who had been their US counterparts during the war – and are plunged into a whole new world, during the thrilling social change of the mid1950s.

Here, Scottish star Graham, 53, tells us more as Jean and Millie continue to adjust to life in a new city.

“I suppose it’s a chance to reinvent themselves, to a certain extent,” says the actress, known for other hit TV dramas, such as Shetland, At Home With The Braithwaites and William And Mary. “Jean’s a lot more resistant to it. She’s a bit more set in her ways, and Millie’s encouraging her to broaden her horizons.”

The fact the spin-off is set on the other side of the Atlantic was welcomed by the motherof-two.

“It breathes life into the show. When it was set in the UK, it was very much focused on post-war, code breaking, and they’re now confronted with the world in a different way.

“There’s a civil rights movement going on in America at the time and these underground societies where homosexuals meet, because it’s still illegal, and jazz clubs, and all that sort of stuff.”

Jean was the supervisor of the younger women working

0 Julie Graham returns in The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco

at Bletchley Park during the war, and is wise, measured and tenacious.

“She’s very much a product of her time,” notes Graham. “These women were just very much ‘put your head down and get on with it’ people. They weren’t flashy in any way, they weren’t pondering their own existence.

“I’ve got a huge admiration for that generation of women, because they had a lot to deal with; they were just thrown back on the scrap heap after being so useful.”

She’s also a character that the audience really love.

“They’re very fond of her. She’s a problem-solver, she’s someone you can rely on, someone who is unflappable in a crisis.”

One of the most rewarding things for Graham is that this is a show where the protagonists are all females.

“One of the young actresses in it, Chanelle [Peloso], who plays Hailey, said when she told people in Canada that was she was going to do this show, and that there were four women in it, the first question they’d ask was, ‘Who’s the male lead?’

As for Graham’s experience of working on female-led shows, “they just have a different energy about them”.

“It’s unusual, especially because when you get older,

the parts do dry up to a certain extent. Thankfully, that is changing a lot, with shows like Killing Eve and Fleabag that are so wonderful, so well written and driven from that creative point of view.

“I think a lot of the success of those shows is because the producers are also the creators. You’ve got a lot more women in those power roles. Women don’t just accept those stereotypes any more. They’re not going to put up with it, frankly.”

Graham has just finished filming another femaleled show, called Queens Of Mystery (about three crime writers) for Acorn TV, which is a streaming service for America. It will be broadcast in the UK later this year.

“That was great fun to make, we shot it last year in Kent. It’s a little bit like Murder She Wrote, meets Midsomer Murders, meets Anna Lee.”

That project is an example of how much streaming services are changing the TV landscape.

“It’s really exciting,” agrees Graham. “There are so many different networks now, and so many different platforms that people want and need content for, so it’s opened up a huge amount of work for actors and writers and directors.

“It’s wonderful, because you no longer have to go down that route of doing something for BBC or ITV. It’s a bit of a golden age at the moment.”

“You’ve got a lot more women in those power roles”

● The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco returns to ITV tomorrow at 9pm