Call the Midwife is back!

[PolkadotsAndMoonbeams]

This Sunday (17th) at 8pm on BBC1.

I enjoyed the Christmas special - it was good to see Delia back, and I think there's going to be a nice romance with Tom and Barbara

The - it looks like we are going to get a thalidomide story.

No she didn't. She said she had nicked cigarettes from her dad as a kid but only took up smoking again when she teamed up with Fag Ash Turner.

She does have the TB lung issue, though, doesn't she? Or does that entirely go away?

I don't really want them to kill her off - I liked her character as a nun - I just think they've lost their way writing them a bit.

I think the Turners will have a happy ending and Delia/Patsy unless it runs for loads more series.

About the social awareness of the nuns. I think that yes some of it is unrealistic written for a modern audience, though they seem to be pulling back from that again now - like a couple of the midwives were actually groped at the tea party at the start of the episode and they just laughed it off because it was normal and they didn't think they could do anything about it - they told Tom to 'give him a hard stare'. I thought that was quite sad but relevant to the time.

But anyway I think the acceptance of things like unmarried mothers, postnatal depression, domestic violence, women inducing abortions, concealed pregnancies, prostitution etc was given sympathy and understanding rather than judgement simply because they were familiar with the women and understood the social factors which had lead to those decisions, not through education which might happen today but just through living it and seeing it so often, it was unremarkable and not shocking to them whereas it probably would have been to a middle class person at the time. I remember that it struck me when reading the books how well and sensitively this community of women understood and generally handled women's issues at this time and it made me quite angry, because effectively, nobody in government listened to or cared about the insights of a load of nuns/nurses as they were just women, and by the dismantling of women's health services such as these (and I do know not all were so idyllic and likely the real one wasn't either, but the knowledge would have been there) we have effectively lost such a goldmine of advice and insights. These things were not considered important enough for government policy or published works but these are women's issues which we are still fighting for recognition of today.

Yes Bertie That's a very good analysis of the programme ( I must get the books).

Are the nuns meant to be RC or not? That might make a difference to the way the civvies are judged. (I might be wrong but IME there was, on the whole, very little empathy towards, orphans or unmarried mothers etc. in the 50s and 60s from the RC institutions).

YY, agree with all of that BB.

ppeat, the nuns are Anglican. But in some ways, Anglican nuns were less modern than their Catholic counterparts. The Catholic Church was in the middle of sorting out the ramifications of Vatican II - eventually, that was what led to lots of Catholic orders doing away with the habit or modifying it, and working closely in communities. Anglican nuns didn't, so far as I understand, modernise at the same time, and a lot of communities are still (today) bound by pretty old rules.

Obviously whether or not you wear a habit doesn't necessarily determine how you feel about sexuality, but still.

I think the programme makers deliberately portray the main characters as unusually tolerant because otherwise viewers would lose sympathy and affection for them, and thus for the programme itself.

When you think about it, all the homophobia, disablism, racism, sexism, judgement about single mothers and prostitutes and so on, comes from random incidental characters in whom we're not invested. If we saw the main characters displaying these attitudes week in, week out then it would be pretty hard going to watch (think of The Magdelene Girls film ). We all disliked Sister Winifred when she was bitching about the pregnant schoolteacher.

The Magdelene Sisters, that should be.

Dh was in a RC grammer school in the 50s \60s , he said the lay teachers were WORSE than the priests. Teaching by fear was the order of the day. He ran away he couldn't stand it.

It traumatised him, he's very bright but the Fathers beat any love of learning or wanting to go on to university out of him. Terry Wogan said the same.

I know he's not the only one as MargotLoved says.

I can't stop wondering who all the other nuns are at compline. Are they not midwives too? And why aren't they ever allowed to eat?

I think this series is going a bit overboard on the 'look how much better things are today' message, and I'm finding it a bit tedious. Agree that Sr Mary Cynthia's part was fabulously acted this week. Sr Monica Joan seems to get less and less senile with each series.

I think the way they link it to historical events keeps it fresh and makes it more poignant though. The Australian child migrants, thalidomide, hormone treatment of gay men causing breast growth, treatment of unmarried mothers etc.

I think the idea is that they didn't want it to be a nostalgia-fest. They didn't want everyone to watch and think "ah, wasn't it lovely in the olden days" when clearly it wasn't all roses. And every storyline is taken from either the Poplar health reports of that time or other primary sources. In that area at that time that's how it was.

The writer and creator, Heidi Thomas,
Is giving a talk on how they research and write the show, at the National Archives in Kew next month.

As for the other nuns, they're known as the Choir Sisters! They don't work in the community. And on that note I didn't know there was a difference between nuns and sisters. Sisters work in the community, nuns don't apparently. So the Nonnatus sisters aren't nuns.

Who says I'm obsessed....

But why don't they eat? Where are they??

Oh and all nuns are sisters, but not all sisters are nuns.

Not sure there is a distinction within the Anglican church, but there is in Roman Catholicism.

I don't know if it is the same thing, anne, but I believe Anglican nuns could be under different kinds of vows - simple vows and solemn vows?

I take the point they can't make people's attitudes too censorious or they're be off-putting, but I think they sometimes have gone too far the other way. I prefer the realism of showing some sympathetic characters who still have views that aren't sympathetic. It's much more interesting TV that way, too. Absolutely agree with shelagh that it works so well not to have it as 'wasn't everything lovely ...'.

I knew it was one way or t'other The whole sisters-nuns thing is so confusing!

The choir sisters must eat at the second sitting. Or they eat scraps!

I'm watching series 1 on Netflix & yes sadly the Jenny character is a bit of a drag.

When I told my good older friend and mum my daughter is gay, with her permission of course, they regaled me with stories of couples they knew who lived together and that it was tolerated much more than gay men. No one was judgemental about it. Just a shrug and quiet acceptance. But I do agree with the poster about the kissing in the phone box. Everything about same sex relationships had to be discreet then.

Maybe the choir sisters aren't allowed contact with the nurses as they are the outside world?

I think they would have difficulty working as they do if they were constantly judging single mothers/pregnancies out of wedlock etc. Maybe they just judge internally and still do their work. Though it seems they aren't going to be so happy about the pill next week.
I'm also sure they had knowledge of people being gay. They mentioned something about the nurses not being allowed to have 'dark secrets'.
One of my RE teachers (in a catholic school, not in the UK) at secondary school had gone to seminary to become a priest (he changed his mind). He was openly gay and told us all about his problems with his husband there were lots of gay men at seminary because it was a way they could reconcile their religion with their sexuality, as it is, I think, only a sin to act on being gay, rather than the being gay in and of itself.
Maybe it was the same for nuns, that if you figured out you were gay it might be easier to be a nun than to have to live with that. I imagine even more so, because there is always more societal pressure on women to conform to the husband and children model than there is on men (who can stay single without too much comment for longer).

Yes I agree that

I think Jenny came across better in the books. It came across more that she was naive and easily shockable and that her initial prejudices, which came across as fairly reasonable, were challenged by her experiences rather than her just being snobby for no reason all the way through.

Bum.

I agree that the writers have to make the lead characters sympathetic so that we can relate to them.

Just watched it when that woman induced a termination in season 2

Makes me sad that some women would have had to have done things like that. I'm so grateful abortions are allowed now

I was getting very confused there for a minute, Country File still seemed to be in full swing!

Evening all, glad country file over ran meant I could catch the start!