The Bletchley Circle Code Breakers Return to PBS

The former code breakers are coming back to PBS, and this time the women of the Bletchley Circle must intervene in two situations before more people are hurt or even killed.

In “Blood on Their Hands,”” we meet another former Bletchley Park code breaker, Alice Merren (Hattie Morahan, Sense & Sensibility), who is awaiting trial for the murder of her former colleague and lover John Richards (Paul McGann, Luther). When Jean visits her in prison, she believes Alice is innocent, hiding the truth to cover for someone. But who? And why, when it is literally her neck on the line? To get to the truth and save Alice from being hanged for a crime she didn’t commit, she enlists the help of her Bletchley friends.

Millie (Rachael Stirling, The Young Victoria), who works as a German translator, and Lucy (Sophie Rundle, Peaky Blinders), now a secretary at Scotland Yard, are ready and willing. Susan (Anna Maxwell Martin, Death Comes to Pemberly), though, is still shaken by the group’s last venture into sleuthing and reluctant to get involved. Plus, she has other things to worry about, including her children and husband Timothy (Mark Dexter, The Bill), whose promotion could mean moving overseas.

As they begin piecing together information they have gotten by hook or by crook, they discover a conspiracy, cover-ups and connections to the military, and they find the person Alice has been covering for. But time is running out for them to prove Alice’s innocence.

In “Uncustomed Goods,” it isn’t a third party whose life the amateur sleuths work to save, but one of their own: Millie. Her import/export sideline of selling perfume, cigarettes, and stockings with Jasper (Rob Jarvis, Hustle) has earned her much-needed money, but it also gets her into more trouble than she bargained for when she is abducted.

What she discovers is horrifying, but she can do nothing to help herself or anyone else from behind locked doors and barred windows. Nor can her friends, who have no idea of where she is, despite having deduced that her dealings in the black market are the source of her disappearance.

The Bletchley Circle returns this Spring with the two-part “Blood on Their Hands” premiering Sunday, 13th April 2014, followed by “Uncustomed Goods,” another two-episode story, starting on Sunday, 27 April 2014 — both at 10 PM ET on PBS. Check your local listings.

—————————