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As a kid, she loved Sue Ellen and the TV show 'Dallas.' But now, Julie Graham is the TV star, helping launch a British invasion

She's one of the stars of the new series, "The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco," which makes BritBox the latest streaming service to unveil original programming

Julie Graham grew up in Scotland, where she was obsessed with a television show called Dallas.

"Obsessed," she says. "Everybody in the UK was obsessed with it. 'Who Shot J.R.?' may still be the biggest show ever in the history of British television."

But Graham's obsession extended even to clothing.

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"I've still got a fantastic T-shirt that says, 'I Love Sue Ellen.' It remains one of my favorite possessions."

British actress Julie Graham, as seen in the show William and Mary. Graham is part of the...
British actress Julie Graham, as seen in the show William and Mary. Graham is part of the new show, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, which debuted in July on the streaming service, BritBox.(BritBox)

And then she laughs, as only she can. Graham's infectious Scottish brogue and winning smile are alluring staples of William and Mary, which ran on British television from 2003 to 2005 but which has recently become a cult favorite in America.

And why? Streaming technology has engulfed America with a new kind of British invasion, which this time is defined not by music but by television. Graham is among the soldiers leading the charge.

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BritBox delivers to the U.S. and Canada William and Mary and dozens of other British hits — the service is owned jointly by the BBC and ITV — but July 26 marked a turning point. On that day, BritBox launched its own entry in original programming. That put it in the rarefied company of Netflix (House of Cards), Amazon Prime (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Hulu (The Handmaid's Tale) and even Facebook (Sacred Lies) in rolling out original programming. As Deep Throat said, "Follow the money."

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2017 that Facebook alone was willing to spend up to $1 billion on original video content through 2018.

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Rachael Stirling, left, and Julie Graham star in The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco.
Rachael Stirling, left, and Julie Graham star in The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco. (Bettina Strauss / AP)

For its foray into original programming, BritBox chose to revive The Bletchley Circle, which aired on PBS from 2012 to 2014 and which featured Graham as one of four lead characters. The new show, filmed in Vancouver, is The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco.

Graham loves the show for being what she calls a female-led drama, during a time when female-led shows are sorely needed. She and her co-stars, she says, were "all very disappointed" when ITV dropped the original series.

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So, when BritBox and the Vancouver-based Omnifilm Entertainment approached the cast about a Bletchley revival, "We were so over the moon," she says. "It's a great story with such great characters. It has a lot of things to say."

Graham and Rachael Stirling are half the original cast. They play women who served as British code-breakers during World War II, seeking to defeat the Nazis. They come to San Francisco to unravel a crime that occurred in Britain but which now bears eerie similarities to homicides occurring in the states. The two British code-breakers recruit a pair of American investigators, played by Crystal Balint and Chanelle Peloso.

In addition to William and Mary and The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, BritBox has cultivated an American audience for such appealing UK hits as the crime show Vera, starring Golden Globe-winning actress Brenda Blethyn, and the killer comedy, Mum, whose lead character is Oscar-nominated actress Lesley Manville.

Graham, 53, is also a welcome presence on Shetland, a mainstay in the increasingly popular genre of Celtic noir. The first three seasons of Shetland can be found on Netflix, but those three and a fourth are accessible on BritBox. Shetland will soon begin filming its fifth season. The Welsh drama, Keeping Faith, starring Eve Myles, with a stunning soundtrack by Amy Wadge, is also luring U.S. viewers.

So what's behind the new British invasion?

"I think the quality of television in Britain is very, very high," says Graham, who like most British actors, is no stranger to the stage, having starred in productions in London's West End. She would love to do a play in New York, or for that matter, Dallas. It would all depend on what it is.

Despite being long on quality, Britain lags behind America, she contends, in generating female-led shows. She cites the activism of such actresses as Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, who she says are making a real difference, HBO's Big Little Lies being a prominent example. Graham has said that actresses over 50 "don't exist" in the film world. She praises the TV industry for leading the way with roles for older actresses. Proving her point is Vera's Blethyn, who's 72, and Mum's Manville, who's 62.

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Even so, "from my perspective as a woman," Graham says, "the U.S. is definitely in the lead in female-led stories," from writing and directing to acting. "I rarely work with female directors in the UK."

For that reason, Graham is a proud proponent of the ERA5050 movement in Britain. Its mantra? "Campaigning for 5050 gender balance on British stage and screen by 2020."

She makes no secret of how she feels, maintaining an outspoken presence on Twitter. Her steady stream of tweets range from the provocative to the political to laugh-out-loud funny.

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For viewers drawn to the Mary of William and Mary, they won't be surprised that the real Graham is not so different from the proud, loving, often-defiant single mom she plays in the show. She's the midwife to Martin Clunes' undertaker, a strangely perfect pairing that underscores the bittersweet parallels between entering life and leaving it.

After playing Graham's leading man on William and Mary, Clunes moved on to the wildly popular Doc Martin, which will soon begin filming its ninth season. It too is available to Americans via the streaming service, Acorn TV.

Graham has sweet memories of William and Mary but says it was time to move on.

"We did three seasons of it," she says. "Eighteen episodes. One of the reasons we didn't do it again was because the writer, Mick Ford, felt he just couldn't do it anymore. This was quite unusual, but he wrote every single episode. He's an actor, a very, very, very good actor. He went to ITV with this idea about an undertaker and a midwife. On the surface, it was, shall we say, sugary, Sunday night fare, but Mick wanted to make it much more gritty."

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He fought hard, she says, to make it grittier than it was.

"The whole thing was quite radical. She's working-class, he's middle-class. She's got mixed-race children and lives in a rough part of London. For that reason, I loved it so much. Mick was really very clever with how he cloaked it. Yes, at the center, it's a love story, but actually it's very radical. He wanted to make a statement about the [National Health Service in Britain], for one. He put in these very subversive things that would kind of filter through.

"The reason Martin and I did not want to keep going with it — Martin is one of my best friends, I adore him — is that if Mick wasn't going to be writing it, we didn't want to be a part of it. Without Mick, it could have easily slipped into sugary, Sunday night television, so we walked away from it, which I think was the best thing to do."

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She calls her William and Mary years "a highlight, since it was one of the first shows I did where I was a lead. I was at the center of the story. That was a big break for me."

It came not long after Graham accepted a part in the show, At Home with the Braithwaites (2000 to 2003), about a woman whose life is transformed by winning the lottery.

"It's one of the best things I've ever read," Graham says. "It was so funny, so dark. I hadn't even gotten to my character's appearance in the script before I phoned my agent and said, 'I want to be a part of this.' And I did it for four years. It was a brilliant part on a brilliant show. For me, it was a turning point, because, yes, it helped lead to William and Mary."

And that helped lead to The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco and Graham's rise in the 21st century British invasion.

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From left to right, Julie Graham, Rachael Stirling, Crystal Balint and Chanelle Peloso, who...
From left to right, Julie Graham, Rachael Stirling, Crystal Balint and Chanelle Peloso, who star in the new original series on BritBox, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco.(BritBox)