ITV Commissions Murder Mystery Mini-Series The Bletchley Circle

ITV has commissioned a murder mystery mini-series based on four (fictional) women, who worked at the (real-life) Bletchley Park.

Titled The Bletchley Circle, the 3-part series will star Anna Maxwell Martin, Rachael Stirling, Sophie Rundle, and Julie Graham as four ordinary women with an extraordinary flair for code-breaking and razor-sharp intelligence skills.

Set in 1951, Susan, Millie, Lucy and Jean have returned to their normal lives modestly setting aside the part they played in producing crucial intelligence which helped the Allies to victory and shortened the war.

Behind Susan's conventional exterior as a 1950's housewife and mother, there's a steely determination you underestimate at your peril. Seemingly unadventurous and conservative on the surface, she is a force to be reckoned with. She just hasn't done anything about it for the last 8 years.

Until now that is … and the unresolved murders of Jane Hart and Patricia Oakes. With her handwritten charts of numbers, dates and times, and stretched lines of wool connecting pins to clips, Susan has spotted a pattern of behavior no-one else has …

Susan goes to the police only to be met with utter skepticism by the desk sergeant. Unaware of her Bletchley background, the police refuse to take Susan's theory seriously. She quickly realizes she can only begin to crack the murders and bring the culprit to justice with the help of her former friends: Bohemian Millie, speaker of fourteen languages and with a streetwise approach to life; Lucy whose youthful, naïve exterior masks a brilliant memory for data recall; and Jean, the methodical no-nonsense organizer with valuable access to key records and documents.

Filming is expected to begin at the end of April.

For more information about Bletchley Park, Sinclair McKay recently published a compendium of memories of the people who once inhabited the Buckinghamshire country house in The Secret Life of Bletchley Park.

(Source: Press release.)