Call the Midwife

[ilovecarbs90]

Is back 18th April. I'm so glad we are getting a series this year, I find it such great escapism.

Is anyone else a fan?

@Toddlerteaplease

I thought Shelagh was supposed to be a tutor at St Cuthberts. So how is she back doing the district rounds at Nonatus. And finding time to make those costumes.

I think the Turners must have a gimp in their dungeon. One that make costumes when they are out. (Also reads the Lancet and all other medical paper and summarise it for Dr Turner.)

@Toddlerteaplease

I thought Shelagh was supposed to be a tutor at St Cuthberts. So how is she back doing the district rounds at Nonatus. And finding time to make those costumes.

She's training the Pupil Midwives - her role is as a midwife tutor.

I'm catching up today. So bloody annoying.

Feel for that student though that came from the Catholic nuns. Bless her.

Dr T and his woke credentials. The law needs to change! He going to be petitioning parliament next and leading gay marches? Doubt it.

Has Shelagh forgotten that she isn't actually Tim's mother? Nice that she loves him and all but she does prattle on.

She's training the Pupil Midwives - her role is as a midwife tutor.

And so you would think, as a pp said before, that she would have made sure her young charges knew the case histories of the women they were visiting.

Instead she hung Nance out to dry like a pair of saggy drawers.

Not cool clypey Shelagh. Not cool.

My brother had a friend whose mum was a teacher in the sixties. She had her own sewing corner, beside a big window on the landing. Her sewing machine was there, set up all the time.
I was deeply impressed, and still am.

I think the writers must be in a real quandary when they're dealing with difficult (if not taboo) subjects, with the benefit of more enlightened nowadays attitudes.

While you'd like to hope that HCPs would have been more sympathetic, and perhaps you'd expect at least one of the midwives (and perhaps even some of the nuns) to have more radically progressive views than societal norms at the time, I really don't think it would be Dr. Turner.

It would be a difficult watch, but perhaps at some point, Heidi Thomas should script a storyline that does reflect the attitudes of the time more harshly without softening with 21st Century opinions. I would say that Sunday's episode about homosexuality had a quicker and softer 'change in attitude by the young man's parents than we witnessed by many in It's a Sin, set two decades later.

Yes I was comparing with it's a sin too.

It's A Sin was also much more accurate in terms of using the language people would really have used. It really jarred with me how modern the language around attraction felt - I just don't think people would have talked like that.

Even Patsy and her girlfriend's relationship was really kept secret wasn't it? Obviously not to we the viewers but they did not go broadcasting it with their colleagues and the nuns? Or have I forgotten something?

@Clawdy

Trixie's hair annoys me! One side looks fine but that silly outward flick on the other side is not a mid-sixties look.

When she appeared on the first episode of this series with that, I kept thinking no! It actually looks like a bit of hair gone wrong, to me, rather than her usual impeccable appearance.

@NewModelArmyMayhem18

Even Patsy and her girlfriend's relationship was really kept secret wasn't it? Obviously not to we the viewers but they did not go broadcasting it with their colleagues and the nuns? Or have I forgotten something?

I think her friends knew, but never talked about it. I'm pretty sure in one episode it was clear SrJ knew, but chose to ignore it.

Patsy and Delia was an open secret really. That said, it was kind of acceptable for a woman to have a female "companion" (although not public displays of affection I imagine!). Only male homosexuality was actually illegal.

I've clearly forgotten those details about Patsy and Delia. I was only telling DD t'other day that lesbianism wasn't illegal pre the late 60s change to the law, but only because Queen Victoria couldn't believe it was a thing!

Sister Julienne was quite lemon-mouthed about Patsy and Delia, wasn't she? Whereas IIRC Sister Evangelina had twigged and was less bothered - but that also fits with her character more.

I definitely think they had deniability though - that was the point, wasn't it, that they were framing it as 'just good friends who'd like to live together,' which is rather different from 'here's my extremely visually unpleasant STD from the bumsex'.

@SheldonesqueTheBstard

Wait until the new curate identifies as a woman and insists he gets a cervical smear.

I fear his woke will revert to shuteye pretty quickly.

Fortunately, from twitter Stephen McGann knows what a woman is, as presumably does Heidi.

Yes women living together as friends was far more accepted. I suppose gender stereotyping meant that it was socially acceptable for women friends to hug, touch etc where it wasn't for men so as long as they didn't snog in public they were just good friends. Men would find it more difficult to hide. Plus if they were engaging in penetrative sex then there may be repercussions. HIV wasn't a thing yet but other STIs were.

In earlier series there was a lot of gentle acceptance from the sisters. For example the brother and sister who lived together bit when they went to the house it was clear they shared a bed. But they provided help and support while saying nothing and the impression was that others would not be so accepting.

In the 60s you might have got the occasional accepting doctor but not so completely woke like Dr T in this episode and I don't think it would be so openly said. After all given the attitudes towards gay men of the time if the news that Dr T was supportive of the gay community he would rapidly lose his patients, career etc. Most medics who were tolerant in those days did it on the quiet.

In earlier series there was a lot of gentle acceptance from the sisters. For example the brother and sister who lived together bit when they went to the house it was clear they shared a bed. But they provided help and support while saying nothing and the impression was that others would not be so accepting. That is one of the few early episodes I remember.

This discussion reminds me, I was reading up on the tradition of lesbian head gardeners at Sissinghurst and came across this fab piece: www.ft.com/content/9a343b42-561e-11de-ab7e-00144feabdc0

I know it's from 2009 so hardly the dark ages, but the relationship it's discussing would have been just about contemporary with Patsy and Delia.

The amazing nurse Crane knew of Patsy and Delia.

After quoting Lorca’s gorgeous ‘it’s true’, she said
‘And, if I may, the pain it costs to love? I believe it is always worth it’

I quote it a lot on here. I thought it was beautiful. (I’m a big old sap). But it stuck with me and will always. For me, it is always about my old dog. My love. My life. My everything.

But love is love wherever you find it.

And Nurse Crane, with those words, gave me so much comfort.

Fair dooos purple I was trying to be funny and failed

Lucille and Cyril irritate me almost as much as Dr T I’m afraid.They’re so relentlessly cheerful and good - there’s absolutely nothing realistically flawed about them. Lucille’s first few episodes were good, but she’s turned into a stereotype of ‘saintly Christian woman’

I was thinking about Lucille's episodes. There was a good one with the mother who had a stroke. Her mother owned the hair salon where she worked and took against Lucille. Suggested she had made her daughter ill and that they should have had a proper midwife.
There was an episode where she confides in Valerie about experiencing racism at her church when she got picked for a solo. I wish they would have shown this. I know she has a lovely church community now, but I wish we would have been invited along for the journey. Would have been good to explore how supposed Christians weren't behaving in a Christian manner. Her fellow midwives could have come to hear her sing even.
There was a lovely moment between her and SMJ when she first arrived where they talked about books as Lucille used to be a librarian. Can't they do something with this?

I can’t remember if we have discussed this but how are the midwives funded? Who pays for their board & lodging. I’d never thought about it before until Nancy made her appearance.

Yes to the sickly sweetness of Dr T, Shelagh, Lucille & Cyril!

National board of health I think

But finding is being cut because a lot more people want to birth in a hospital

There was also the episode with the gay mechanic who's wife was pregnant... He tried to gas himself in his car... People weren't very accepting of him. I thought Richard Fleeshman acted so well in that episode..

@Elderflower14

There was also the episode with the gay mechanic who's wife was pregnant... He tried to gas himself in his car... People weren't very accepting of him. I thought Richard Fleeshman acted so well in that episode..

Attitudes were changing, that's the point. If attitudes hadn't changed homosexuality wouldn't have been decriminalised in 1967. Unfortunately there are still some people struggling to accept it 50 years later.