Call the Midwife

[Toddlerteaplease]

Well this is boring.

Yes it was normal outside shops, but not just on a busy street for hours.

It was really normal to FF in the 1960’s.
I agree with PP that if the writers are young it shows. Although, I’d have thought they would research something like this.

It was normal to be outside a shop/garden in a pram in the 70’s and 80’s as well. Those beautiful coach built prams didn’t fit inside shops. I know that babies were left in the garden to “exercise their lungs” by screaming and crying. While Mum did housework/drank gin. I don’t think Trixie would have been so shocked to see a baby in a pram outside the house. The opening credits show prams outside houses.

Yes it was normal outside shops, but not just on a busy street for hours

Streets with shops are much busier than residential streets! And Trixie had no way of knowing how long the baby had been outside.

That terraced house probably didn’t have a garden.

I also remember babies being routinely wrapped up and put out in their prams in the 1960s. My mother said she'd often come out and find the pram gone from the front of the house or outside a shop, and discover that a neighbour had taken the baby for a stroll or into her house for a cuddle. And when we had sex education at primary school I discovered that only one of my 30 or so classmates, born in the mid-1960s, had been breastfed. Formula feeding, and competitive early weaning, were more usual.

I'd have liked Cyril's initial reaction to Lucille's pregnancy to have been something other than delight. That relationship could do with a little bit of grit in it.

I daresay they will have their share of problems if they remain in the series for long, everyone does at some time or another.

The social distancing is really ruining the show for me. It's so unnatural, the close up scenes of the babies you can tell are all edited etc.

Really taken away CTMs charm. Struggling to get into this season, and Trixie constantly hiding away. It also feels as if they are jumping around way to much between scenes.

Was the weather not very warm though? Perhaps that was why Trixie was concerned about the baby being left outside in the heat and wrapped up aswell. This is what I automatically thought as she checked the baby with her hand.

@aravae

Was the weather not very warm though? Perhaps that was why Trixie was concerned about the baby being left outside in the heat and wrapped up aswell. This is what I automatically thought as she checked the baby with her hand.

I think it was really hot, at least that's what Sister Monica Joan had been moaning about and Fred was selling all the lollies...maybe Trixie was worried the baby would overheat?

The SD is silly, when they are giving birth two midwife’s are wearing masks yet one has to be other side of the room? Surely that’s only time they can hold hands or pat shoulder or whatever legitimately. Cant all be staying 2m with masks on on site the rest of the time.

I remember our local sweet shop having a freezer failure and getting free ice cream, probably mid 1970's

Ridiculous how Trixie "rescued" the baby from her pram in the street and shouted at the mother. It normal to see babies parked in prams outside shops and houses. My Mum told me it was common practice (in the 1960s) for mothers to wrap the baby up warm and put them outside in their pram either in the garden or outside the house while Mum was inside doing housework.

Surprising really. I mean, can you remember the girl who was a former prostitute married to the elderly rich man? She left her baby outside Violets shop and went home because she was struggling. She wasn’t shouted at or anything. In fact Phyllis helped her about it.

Then she disappeared and left the baby at home completely. Again she wasn’t bollocked but supported

I don’t get why the change in the homosexuality laws was apparently shoehorned into the episode, unless it’s a foreshadowing of something to come in a later story. It just felt like another way of illustrating the saintliness of the Turners with no relevance to the episode at all.

Leaving aside the social distancing farce, the mysteriously empty waiting rooms of Dr 'Och Paaaatrrrick' Turner and the completely inaccurate response from Trixie at the baby left outside in its pram (I'm a child of the 60s by 9 months and therefore qualified to judge) I thought the actor who played Sammi Rosen - Alex Waldmann according to Google - was fantastic. A very moving storyline.

@aravae

Was the weather not very warm though? Perhaps that was why Trixie was concerned about the baby being left outside in the heat and wrapped up aswell. This is what I automatically thought as she checked the baby with her hand.

Trixie was wearing her cape, rather than just her dress and cardi, so it wasn’t hot.

Yes, I know that was to disguise her bump in RL. Just shows how silly this bit was, in terms of what actually happened in the sixties and the actual continuity of the episode

Pity the actor playing a Polish man didn’t have a Polish accent.

And there was little angst as to how he might otherwise earn enough to support his family.

Her father was going to make him one of the managers rather than having him working with the furs.

I imagine if he was 12 going into the camp he could easily have been relocated to Uk at say 16 and lot his accent over time. He did look around 40 his wife looked late 30s too. If you seen millions murdered for being Jewish then imagine you do anything look less foreign/Jewish in new country.

The Turners were weirdly relieved about the legalisation of homosexuality.

Do you think they’re subtly outing Timmy?

They need to show whine in another gay storyline soon. We’re due one.

Will give Dr Turner another chance to cock his head and sympathetically nod.

I am still cross Patsy and Delia aren't in it any more. I know it's probably because Emerald Fennel wanted to go do directing things instead (and why not), but that was a cracking storyline. I don't really want to see (or imagine) Timmy getting arrested for cottaging and Dr T explaining the finer points of sodomy to Sheila while she gasps over his wisdom.

I had no problem with Trixie's anxiety about the baby being outside. She knew the mother was struggling and she knew it was out of character for this mother to leave the baby unattended in the street. I assumed she was worried the mother might have harmed the baby or herself, or left the house, and she was angry with herself as much as with the mother, from fear of what might have been.

If you seen millions murdered for being Jewish then imagine you do anything look less foreign/Jewish in new country. I didn't think he sounded entirely English though? Having recently watched a profoundly moving documentary called 'The Last Survivors' about some of the few remaining (British naturalised) Holocaust survivors, they all had varying degrees of 'trace birth country accents', even though they've been over here for seventy years or so.

It was such a moving storyline in one of the best episodes for quite some time.

I was so hoping they would carry on the story of the two babies that died in the first episode, with the mother who was taken advantage of by a married man. I thought they might start investigating who this man could be only to find out that it was none other than saint Turner...

On a more serious note, it would have been interesting to draw out some of the other storylines and have a series focussed on multi culturalism at the time.

another gay storyline and Will give Dr Turner another chance to cock his head

I know it’s v childish of me, but