To ask you if I could just start watching Call The Midwife tonight having never even seen 1 episode?

[SparklySeaShell]

Well could I? Never seen it, never fancied it, until now! Could I just start watching it tonight do you think without having and prior idea what's gone on? Or would I be totally confused?!

They are all trained midwives/district nurses and some are nuns as well.
The older nun is elderly (and slightly dotty) and my favourite character!
Trixie is a recovering alcoholic.
It’s set in Poplar.

FYI the doctor’s wife used to be a nun/midwife but then she fell in love with him.

Sparkly, just to let you know, the Doctors wife - the one going on about an au pair- used to be a nun but they fell I love! The older boy was his, then they adopted,then had a child together (it's a complicated one)

Sorry, mumtomaxwell, missed your info!

The Doctors wife seemed a bit odd, so she used to be a nun, that might explain it a bit!

The settings, props, costumes foods, houses etc are so good as well, I was a child of the 70`s and much of this stuff takes me right back.
It was SO made for a Sunday evening.

The older seasons often run on the Drama Channel on Freeview.

I've never seen a bad episode OP. Well worth watching from the start. The books are more than worth reading. My DGM who grew up in the East End recognises how real this series is.

OMG I forgot it was on thank god for iplayer!

There are three books written by Jennifer Worth: 'Call the Midwife', 'Fairwell to the East End' and 'In the Midst of Life' which I think the first 3 series are based loosly on. Trixie, the Doctor, his wife and the nuns (apart from sister Bernadette) have been in it since the beginning, and were real - life people.
Vanessa Redgrave plays the voice of Jenny who was in the first 3 series and who memoirs form the basis of the show.
She left (as in real life she had done) but it was such a popular show that they kept it going. I believe it is still loosly based on real events/people such as the Thalidomide story a few years ago.

Definately read the books, they are brill, but so so sad in parts.

If you're in Kent there are tours at Chatham Dockyard as some of it is filmed there.

I think it's a triumph for the BBC costume and props department! And interesting in terms of the development of the history of medicine; birth of the NHS, the change from home to hospital births, thalidomide, and the discovery of the causal connection between smoking and lung cancer etc etc. But it can be horribly saccharine and revisionist in terms of the nuns who I'm sure were dedicated nurses, but I'd lay bets that they weren't quite so "right on" when it came to single mothers and ethnic minorities in the context of their time! I watch it and enjoy it nonetheless! (You've got to love Jenny Agutter!) And it's good to be able to watch a largely female centred drama too.

Tonight, in the kitchen of the Jewish family there was a toaster, it has little doors that you open to put the bread in. I have one the same which was my parents.

However, I also noticed the baby was wrapped in an IKEA towel. A first.

There were episodes showing before Christmas on Drama TV which seem to have gone now but there is this if you are interested.
drama.uktv.co.uk/shows/call-the-midwife/

Just wait til you get to the ones with Miranda Hart as Chummy.

• Are some of them nuns and some not?

Yes, but the nuns and midwives all live together in the convent.

• Are they general nurses as well as midwives?

They occasionally diverge into district nursing, and there have been a couple of storylines in the past where a midwife has gone on secondment to a hospital, but for the most part they're midwives

• What was the thing about questioning the older ladies state of mind

Sister Monica Joan has always been a bit dotty and no longer works as a midwife, but some of the press articles about the series said she was going to have a medical storyline of her own.

• Is the lady with the perfume (who was such a nice midwife to the lady with the breech birth) an alcoholic

Yes, Trixie is a recovering alcoholic

• So it's set in the east end of London

Yes, Poplar, but filmed elsewhere

• Just an observation that I loved the new midwife!

You'll love them all ❤ The great thing is that because the series is moving through the decades it never gets stale; it's certainly not past its best before date.

I think it's strength is its old fashioned charm mixed with hard hitting issues.
The "workhouse howl" episode has me in floods. The books are brilliant.

Oh yes, 'Shadows of the Workhouse' is the second book and 'In the Midst' is one she wrote separately.

I was a first-timer last night, am wondering now how I've never watched before I loved it so much Planning to watch this series and then start from the beginning on Netflix, bliss!

Tonight's episode was excellent. Had me in floods of tears when the man was saying those beautiful words to his dying wife.