The Bletchley Circle: My German Wife Identifies the Murderer, Then Promptly Insults Him

My wife loves a good murder mystery, especially gritty crime dramas involving serial killers. (Morbid fascination seems to be an inherent trait of all human beings, though I’ve found it to be far more developed in the German psyche.)

Together, my wife and I have watched quite a few murder mystery shows on Netflix: Twin Peaks, The Killing, Damages, Top of the Lake, Bloodline, Broadchurch, and, most recently, The Bletchley Circle. (Note: Most of these shows are worth watching, but Damages is by far the best, and we proudly award it with 5 out of 5 Merkel Diamonds:

Anyway, The Bletchley Circle is also pretty fun to watch. It is a British TV crime, drama and mystery series set in the early 1950s in London, England. It begins seven years after the end of WWII and follows four women who worked together during the war as cryptographers at Bletchley Park. When a series of similar murders occur in London, the four women reunite and use their unique codebreaking skills to identify the murder patterns and track down the killer. (Unarmed and without the assistance of the police, mind you, like four women with the combined testicular mass of Jupiter.)

So as we were finishing up the last episode of The Bletchley Circle one Saturday afternoon, we finally discovered the identity of the serial killer. The moment he was revealed, my wife recoiled in disgust and pointed at the TV screen, exclaiming:

“Who? That milk face?“*

*From the German word, “Milchgesicht,” which figuratively translates to “baby face,” but literally (and hilariously) translates to “milk face.”**

**My wife has used this term often over the years, but until now, I’d mistakenly assumed “milk face” referred to an individual of revoltingly pale complexion.