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

@ someone clicking on the wrong quantity of teal

I really like Jenny Agutter, but her character now is becoming too saintly and accepting of everything and everyone.

I have to agree with that, I was very surprised at her mild "well we've had a quick vote so I guess men can now come to the mothering class". I expected a firm "it is no place for a man, birth is a women-only thing. Its called mothering class for a reason".

She just smiles sweetly at everything that happens!

Ah, but Sister Julienne is going the way of the teal. She's been infected! Her habit was noticeably more teal that the others in the last episode, I thought.
Perhaps Dr Turner will arrive with the grave news of a new, terrifying disease, hitherto unknown to medical science. They're not sure how to treat it but Shelia realise the connection as she removes the handknitted teal cardigan from a sickly newborn baby. Cue scenes of cockney decorators frantically painting over teal walls (to cheers from a perfectly blended mutlicultural crowd who just happen to be hanging around), huge communal bonfires of teal clothes (to wailing from Trixie who's lost half her wardrobe), and Fred setting up a sideline selling pink and yellow paint.

I did think that handmade yellow baby cardigan seemed a jarring colour, I realise what was wrong with it now!

Back in the 60s GPs worked from either their own home or a nearby single handed practice like a shop front.
They didn't usually employ many staff, more often than not it would be the doctor's wife doing all the phone answering and reception work.

Health centres and group practices didn't come in until the 70s.

Ours was in a big converted house. Two GPs (one male, one female) with a surgery room each and a waiting room with benches and a gas fire that always seemed to be on, all weathers. One receptionist for both. EVERYBODY smoked while they were waiting, it seemed. This was late 1960s / 1970s.

Dr F had a big jar of dolly mixtures on his desk for children. Dr M had treacle toffee lollipops. I always hoped I'd see Dr F.

That last episode seemed a bit far fetched to me. Oh he's got smallpox, we'll all drive him out of town with torches and pitchforks (obviously not the caring midwives, although why they're involved I don't know) ...... oh he's got leprosy, well that's fine then, we're all totally comfortable with it and we're going to let him stay in an all female home until he gets transferred for treatment to Surrey! Really?????

East end picnic to Epping Forest - very plausible. Multi-cultural east end picnic to Epping Forest - a lot less plausible. The social history I studied suggested that whilst there was reasonable tolerance of different ethnic groups in London, there was very little intermingling at that time.

The show used to be brilliant, but I think the farther it is straying from the original books, the less good it gets.

MissMoneyPlant I barely noticed what Trixie has been wearing this series, since every scene with her in is now a game of "spot what Trixie is carrying/standing in front of to hide the baby bump"

@squarecorners - yes it was all a bit 'Leprosy? Well, why didn't you say so? Come in, sit down. Have a scone' wasn't it?

How did Phyllis diagnose it? Has there been something in her back story I missed about an interest in tropical medicine?

Sorry, that should have been @MargoLovebutter

Snorting at endofthelines's description of the deadly Teal Outbreak of 1963 .

Sorry, it was MissMoneyPlant.

If the series gets as far as the 70s everything will be orange and brown.

Trying to picture Fred in loon pants and an afghan coat.

Yes the leprosy thing was stupid.

A relative of mine was one of the last people to die of smallpox in the UK.
He was a doctor and caught it from someone exactly like the character portrayed in the programme.
He was was placed in isolation in his own hospital, where he died.
His wife and children never even had a chance to say goodbye.
He was 30 years old and his children were 3 and 5.
Their daddy went to work one morning and they never saw him again.
I remember my mother telling me the story and being in tears over 40 years later.
It was the most awful thing.
We all got our smallpox vaccination that year.

Phyllis spent a lot of time abroad I think?

Endoftheline, how awful :(

We are so, so lucky to have the vaccinations we do these days.

I was thinking leprosy was surely just as bad as smallpox?! Vi saying 'so he was a leper' was the only realistic sounding comment tbh.

Given there are still problems with integration and accepting different cultures into established communities today its totally unbelievable that there would be so little hostility towards Lucille.

I still love the show though