To think Call the Midwife is too depressing

[jewelledsky]

for a Sunday night and to almost be tempted by Top Gear as a light viewing alternative? Where is Downton Abbey?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Hope you like them!

[BoffinMum]

I think the series serves as a very useful reminder as to why we have the NHS and welfare support, and what things would start to look like fairly rapidly if we didn't.

[SarfEasticated]

I absolutely love it - it's my favourite programme at the moment. I really enjoy the historical details, the characters and I love all of the births too. Amazing to see how our parents and grandparents lived. I find it really life-affirming.

sorry YABU

[Bue]

meimohrs, I wouldn't base my opinion of her on one dodgy Daily Fail article! I read the article too and it was very thin on actual facts.

[mrsjay]

it was kind of grim and heartwarming at the same time I can imagine it was really like that a bit like life I hate things like cranford or downtown so CTMW is fine for sunday night tv and makes a change

[mrsjay]

IT is* and yabu

[MadMumToThree]

Well I'm really enjoying it - it's one if the few programmes I want to last l

[Xenia]

BM, the series is set in the days of the NHS which was set up afterWII which is why the pregnant women don't pay. It is a new and big thing for them - free healthcare for all.

[MadMumToThree]

(Aargh fat fingers on phone!). last longer. I think because they are true stories makes it more interesting.

Although I do wonder if the midwives really need to get quite to close to the action

[mrsjay]

Although I do wonder if the midwives really need to get quite to close to the action

they are right THERE eh I guess the houses were dark hospitals have artificial light so the dont need to be right THERE !

I watch with my dds they enjoy it and know how luck they are when the time comes to have their own babies,

[mrsjay]

I think a lot of women had babies at home because that is what they did they needed to be home for their other children and having a baby in hospital was for emergencies only or if there was a need house not clean enough or poor conditions most women had babies at home even witht he NHS

[ppeatfruit]

But mrsjay and madmum don't the midwives have to actually HELP the baby's head to be born? which would mean having to be there!! I know mine did (DS1 had a large head ,TMI I know, sorry, but she was sort of 'scrabbling' about to help him out IYSWIM!!).

[mrsjay]

yes I know but watching it the seem to be very close up all the way through

[MadMumToThree]

They do look as though they're trying to get in with baby sometimes

[mrsjay]

its like narnia up there

[EnjoyResponsibly]

Last nights episode and the Christmas episode are harrowing reading in the books.

The story about the woman entering the workhouse having sold her hair and teeth and then losing her children after their final night has stayed with me for months.

It's one of those things in life that you need to read about appalling tragedy to appreciate what you really have.

I thought it was so sad last night that the first touch from the GP that Sister Bernadette had yearned for turned out to be the touch that diagnosed her TB.

I was in tears by the end.

[McNewPants2013]

Think I will get these books.

[Titchyboomboom]

I love it and the tv adaptation is so much less harrowing than the book

[EnjoyResponsibly]

What's funny is that I read them withVanessa Redgraves voice in my head. Weird.

[ppeatfruit]

I don't know though mrsjay and madmum there always seems to be teacloth hanging out in the way IYSWIM

[stubbornstains]

I think when people are talking about pre-NHS days in reference to CTM, they mean that a lot of the stories refer back to pre-NHS, or pre- Welfare State times.

Notably the Mrs Jenkins storyline. I think all members of the Conservative Party should be strapped down and read that chapter from the book, notably the bit where she's refused parish relief after she injures her arm in a work accident, and told she's "lazy and workshy". And then I think they should have a long hard think about some of the inflammatory crap they spout about the poor, and where it can end.

[2old2beamum]

Due to my advancing years I started my Paediatric Nursing in 1962. For a short time during our training my friend and I spent a few days with the nuns in Poplar, believe me you this series is spot on.

The poverty and deprivation I witnessed has shaped my life and taught me never to be judgemental

When watching Call The Midwife I can still smell the East End.

[hackmum]

stubbornstains - I so agree with you about the Mrs Jenkins storyline. It makes me angry that people forget so quickly how working-class people suffered before there was a welfare state.

I loved the three books, but I've been wondering for ages how much of what she wrote was true, and how much exaggerated or made up. I read them with the assumption that it was all true, and then I read an interview with the remaining Nonnatus nuns that said they didn't remember anyone like Chummy or Sister Monica Joan, and I started to wonder if she'd made those characters up and, if so, how much else she'd made up. I'd love to know but I imagine it would be very hard to find out.

[willesden]

Downton is full of death, miscarriage, widowhood, fostered children, poor women working as prostitutes, war, accidents, homosexual men being beaten up, unrequited love and death in childbirth. Exactly which bit of Downton cheers you up on a Sunday night then?

[Missbopeep]

I posted this before but TBH some of you are writing as if CTM was 1850 not 1950+

The NHS existed in the 1950s and I was born alive and kicking in an NHS hospital in the mid 50s.

My parents used contraception as did most of their generation and planned families. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth- was brought up in a flat with an outside loo and no bathroom- tin bath in lounge.

But the NHS and reasonably good care existed.