Call the midwife starts this Sunday!!! Who's excited?

[Soubriquet]

I certainly am

I don't think it's a good as it was when it first started, and it can be a tad predictable at times but I still love this show

"But they couldn't have been, because there wasn't a hint of teal!"

😂😂😂

Sorry Francis - I wasn't clear. She was using "shell-shock" to refer to something that we would now say was PTSD. She was in her 50s so was definitely aware of the war connotations of "shell-shock". My point is that people in the 60s would have been well aware of shell-shock, as although being of wartime origin it was still in common use in the 80s, as you say, a long time later. The fact that in the plot Dr Smug supposedly suffered from it himself he would surely have remembered what it was and what the symptoms were.

I love it and the doctor in it but the last episode just went a bit too far in presenting 2018 values of acceptance of people who are different, such that it became hard to believe it.

My father was practising a psychiatrist then. They certainly knew about the effects of war and other traumas but would not have used PTSD as the term and the programme did not either so that seemed pretty accurate to me. It was all fairly well done, I thought. I pretty sure my father worked with social workers in the 1960s. I think there was an institute of social work founded in 1961 and as far as I remember he did call them social workers but that was not in London.

In case anyone needs more inspiration for the supposed colour of 1963.
greenandmustard.co.uk/interior-design-home-inspiration/inspiration-the-rise-of-terrific-teal-interiors/

They did feature G&A in one episode. Trixie (I think) had it on the side during a birth and made a passing reference to it.

OH and I were at university in the mid / late sixties. My degree was Social Theory and Institutions and there was definitely a Social Work option then (I didn’t do it).

MIL has always enjoyed watching it Wild & Francis as there is a lot she recognises in terms of setting and period... but she does point out quite a lot of factual inaccuracies! I think she enjoyed the books a lot more.

She got some of her old photos out when we went up this time... the Methodist Church had laid on a party for some of the local children... it looked like a scene straight out of CTM!

I just had a look at the writing credits for this series. Every episode so far has been written by someone different. Heidi Thomas only wrote Ep 1. I suspect though that she has control over where it all goes and who gets the most character development!

I read the books and passed them to my daughter before they made the series actually. They are both good. The description in the book of the girl brought back from Spain after the civil war whom the priest marries to her man when she is about 13 is fascinating of its time. She went on to have about 20+ babies at home. That was also featured in the first TV series. I certainly recommend that people read the books if they can too.

What year is it?

I thought that smallpox was routinely vaccinated against in 1963?

It’s 1963

I thought it was 1963.

Wasn't the smallpox vaccine routinely given then?

The vaccine existed certainly but there were occasional outbreaks. There was one in 62 which they referenced in the episode when they said people died in Bradford. I think there were cases in Bradford and in Wales somewhere that year. The last case was in the 70s though I think the woman who caught it got it from a lab sample.

I love CTM but agree this series has been somewhat of a let down. It’s lost it’s grit and realism, everything has a happy ending. It wasn’t like in the earlier series.

I’ve read the books and really enjoyed them. I couldn’t get more than a few chapters into In the Midst of Life though.

Re the doctors big hands. They’re not actually the actors a lot of the time. McGann is left handed and the medical equipment is right handed so he finds it difficult to use and make it look good so they use a hand stand in.

I thought that smallpox was give alone?

What was a satisfying bit of apt historcal evidence to find, Francis!

Sorry, "What a..."

The books say Jenny Lee was never quite sure if Sister MJ was totally verging on senility or was playing up a lot to be mischievous. It quotes:

'..her behaviour was often far from Christian. She was often selfish and inconsiderate....goodness and cruelty rubbed shoulders'.

I think Judy Parfitt plays her wonderfully. Mind you, I'd watch JP watch paint dry

"Found my vaccination details (born April 1963)"

Fantastic!

I have (somewhere) a small card with my details on-I think it went on the bassinet?
(Or incubator in my case!!)

Re. teal - in the scene in the surgery with Vi, Fred, and Reggie, Vi is wearing a teal skirt and Fred a teal shirt. It gave the impression (to me anyway!) that they were sharing a two-piece suit.

I don't think we can blame the writers for the teal though.

I reckon when ordering the fabric this year the wardrobe department accidentally clicked '2000 bolts of teal fabric' instead of 20 and '900 tins teal paint' instead of 9.

The supplier doesn't do returns so they're desperately using it all up in this year's budget.