Darth Real Life is breathing down my neck again, so, in brevity:

- The Bletchley Circle is back for another season, i.e. another three episodes, starting out promisingly.

- courtesy of the international BBC iplayer, I watched the first season of Last Tango in Halifax, which was lovely. Also a good reminder that when he's not spouting Oxfordian nonsense, Derek Jacobi can be great. The premise of the series is that two widowed pensioners, Alan (Derek Jacobi) and Celia (Anne Reid), who were each other's school crushes but lost contact afterwards for decades, find each other again and decide to get married. This does not sit well at first with their respective families. Each has a daughter in her forties (both with kids of their own) who is also a main character, which means we get Nicola Walker (!!! good to see you again, Nicola Walker!) as Gillian (Alan's daughter, a competent, fierce and moody farmer with something of a catastrophic love life and A Secret In Her Past (which, since the show takes place in Yorkshire, makes Gillian the female Byronic hero strolling across the moors fields), and Caroline (headmistress at a school with a doctorate in chemistry, somewhat repressed and high strung, in the process of getting rid of her not malevolent but utterly unreliable husband (who cheated on her but now wants to return) and also in the process of coming out re: her romance with another (female) teacher, Kate (who is played by Nina Sosanya). Also present in this show as Gillian's brother-in-law, Robbie, a policeman who has it in for her in more than one sense, is Ray Carling Dean Andrews. And of course there are the (grand) kids, all teenagers, whom I don't think I've seen before but who come across well.

There are the expected personality clashes (with a side line of class clashes) between Gillian and Caroline at first, and their turbulent personal life contrasts to their parents' autumnal romance, but one of the nice things about the show is that there are no villains, and (nearly) everyone has their good and bad sides. Even characters like Caroline's husband, John, who is a bit of a parasite sponging off the nearest sympathetic female shoulder, or the oafish Paul (see above re: Gillian's catastrophic love life) turn out to have positive qualities as well and after a while, you can see where they are coming from, too. And Celia might be our twinkly and charming heroine (plus she and Alan are terribly endearing together), but when Alan the Old Labour man discovers halfway through the season she reads the Daily Mail and voted for Thatcher, this isn't random information; Celia's initial reaction to Kate isn't good at all (both to the part where Kate means Caroline in a lesbian relationship and the part where Kate is black), which shocks Alan who until then idealized his school crush. Alan is probably the only character who seems to have solely positive qualities, but Derek Jacobi gives him a natural sweetness and charm that mean you don't think he's too good to be true.

I am very amused that this review, after applauding Jacobi and Reid for being "capable of doing more with a startled look or careful smile (not to mention the Yorkshire patois of "nowts" and "weres") than most actors can do in seven pages of dialogue", points out that "the two also share the odd distinction of having taken Daniel Craig as a cinematic lover — Jacobi as artist Francis Bacon in "Love Is the Devil" and Reid in the stunning and unsettling "The Mother". This makes me wonder whether there are any crack James Bond crossovers. Seriously, though, the first season would have made a perfect miniseries as it tells a story that could stand alone, but I am delighted there is more to watch because I really like all the characters, and the actors are great together.