Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Julie Graham, Rachael Stirling, Hattie Morahan, Sophie Rundle, Faye Marsey, David Hounslow, Nik Blood, Edyta Budnik, Brana Bajic, Orestes Sophocleous, Ian Stuart Robertson, Rupert Holliday, Michael Wedder.
With Anna Maxwell Martin’s character having departed the confines of London to go abroad with her husband, the team is one woman short but where better to look for a replacement than the colleague the women of The Bletchley Circle saved from hanging in the previous two part story.
The story of human trafficking is as old as time and as current and as despicable now as it was at any point in history, it is what makes the latest story in which the ladies who served their country in secret during the dark days of World War Two by pitting their intelligence against the entire might of the German army so intriguing. This was a case in which the four women, led by the superb Julie Graham as Jean, found themselves up against survivors of the siege of Malta, black marketers, human traffickers and bent policemen, and find perhaps the worst kind of enemy to fall foul of, someone who understands codes just as well as they do and are prepared to murder to safe guard their investments.
When Millie, the excellent Rachael Stirling, gets abducted from her own home and is treated to cross examination by the matriarch of the Maltese gang in pursuit of money that has been stolen from them, the dominos start to fall down heavily, not just with precision but with a clatter and with consequences that are far reaching and deeply unsettling. No matter how disturbing the sight of one person being sold into slavery is, the story has to be told and the people behind this 1950s drama struck the right balance between gripping story-telling and over blown sensationalism.
With the help of a procured Enigma machine from Bletchley Park, the women were able to solve the encrypted work of the matriarch and thereby saving the abused and terrified women form a fate that even now is enough to make people with a decent bone in their body sick to their souls.
Although the series is only two stories long it has nonetheless been a re-education into the great work done by all at Bletchley and the price some of them paid afterwards.
Ian D. Hall