Zoe Forest Nothing much to get excited about, nor to retain my interest. Sure, they are clever but it is just another pseudo-crime 'drama'. And we know that they are going to succeed. The intervening process could be better done? The acting is good, as is production and directing. But it is the writing that lets the concept down. The idea of flashbacks to the real Bletchley story is clever.I would be more interested in more about the Bletchley days. There would have been plenty of weird events and happenings then, in spite of war-time secrecy and the prevailing attitudes. Replacing clever guys with clever girls is not really enough.

Raymond (Reviewing Season 1) I like British detective stories, I'm interested in problem solving, code breaking, crypts and logic reasoning. I'm interested in ww2 and post-ww2. Still wasn't too excited about this.Why not then? There is very little of the actual code breaking, reasoning etc. They kind of jump to conclusions when it comes to viewer. They talk about code breaking, but there's never a real moment you'd feel like you/they actually figured out something relevant. It felt kind of dumbed down. The story in general is quite interesting, but the script around it is quite yawning.The cast.. well the leading lady in my opinion wasn't very likable. She was OK, but the same thing with Gillian Anderson in the recent "The Fall", as a character I felt she was quite uninteresting. The youngest of the circle had a more solid background written in the script, but I'm not sure if I could even distinguish the two remaining women from each other, they were bystanders at best.And even tho one of the ladies had a more solid background written in the script, I'm not sure if it was relevant really. It was kind of a sub plot without a proper conclusion. Maybe flesh for the second season.So. Not crap, but nothing special either.

WatchedAllMovies This is an old school detective movies where crime investigations are based on deductions, clues, etc. There's no DNA, fingerprints, or other modern methods.The main characters are four British women that used to be code breakers. They decided to investigate a serial murderer because they found the murderer left behind patterns that they can decode, just like breaking codes during the war.It was an OK movie. Part of the story is over the top. Like when one woman pull out a math book to help figure out the killer's pattern, I thought that was kind of ridiculous. Fortunately she did not pull out a calculus book or used differential equations.I was able to predict one murder in the movie just by thinking, if she goes to this person for help, wouldn't the serial killer also have guessed it? It is disappointing these supposedly smart women never thought about the possibility.What is worse, the main character seems to enjoy putting herself in harm's way without thinking. Most people know when you are getting close to catching the killer, the killer may not sit still and may strike back. This thought never occurred to the main character.It is also stupid these women set a trap to lure the killer and then lost track of the bait.It is obvious the movie was written by not so intelligent writers. Overall it's a movie with an interesting beginning and a lame ending.

celr The genre of the amateur detective is old and shopworn. In the hands of the masters like Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers it can be brilliant, as long as we accept the formal quaint convention that a little old lady or an English lord might go around solving murders that baffle the police. In Bletchley Circle instead of one amateur sleuth we get four: a committee of nerdy women who, having worked at code-breaking in WWII, now have not much to do and nothing to challenge their superior minds. In fact, almost the entire first episode is spent having one of the ladies trying to convince the other three to join the hunt for a vicious serial killer. But even the four together don't add up to one Miss Marple or Peter Whimsey. They're supposed to be super smart and great at putting together clues from reading newspapers and other evidence they collect, but at the same time they're clueless, bumbling and squeamish. One nearly gets herself raped trying to bait the killer and they commit various obvious offenses by contaminating crime scenes and stealing evidence. No wonder the police regard them with suspicion. Though they uncover leads through careful analysis, how they arrive at their conclusions is summarized so quickly and sketchily that the audience has no idea how the pieces were put together. In detective fiction the reader (or viewer) is supposed to have some idea of the steps that lead to the solution of the case. In this we are just told the women are doing some heavy thinking and then come out with a result.Another very annoying feature is the heavy feminist bias that muddies the plot. Not counting the killer, most all the men in this series are either fools or abusers. This is retro feminism from the 1980s superimposed on a postwar story. One girl's husband notices that she's absent from the home at odd hours and improbably accepts her strange behavior without explanation. Another woman's husband beats her up, a digression which adds to the theme that men are beasts and annoyingly delays the unfolding of the plot. Grotesque and creepy details of the killer's M.O. seemed purely gratuitous to me detracting from the excitement of the hunt. The mystery-thriller is an old standby and needs new elements to keep it fresh, but remember that gifted amateurs going around solving crimes is a literary convention that requires a willing suspension of disbelief.