Call the Midwife.

[Toddlerteaplease]

Anyone watching? Dr smug unfortunately appears fully recovered from the train crash.

I'm really surprised the production team have been so obliging to let (presumably contracted) actors out of their contracts to do other work - Trixie was off "taking care of her Godmother" in Italy, and now Lucile is in Jamaica. It just leaves such a hole in the show.
Also the reductions improvement in Sr MJ's dementia over the past few series, she is far more lucid in recent years than at the start. Mabe Dr Turner has found a cure of dementia too

I assumed the inspiration for last night's episode was Cathy Come Home, which depicted a family being broken up due to homelessness. I still remember being left in tears by it. I doubt that it was at all easy for a social worker to magic up a home for a family at that time.

We only saw them queuing together on one day, but the earlier conversation made it clear the father had been going to the offices to queue previously.

Does anyone else find Trixie just dire?

I can't square how she put Matthew up to speaking out at the council meeting yet the trailer for next week shows her distraught over her MIL's missing tiara, lined up for her wedding.

I can't bear her voice and hope she doesn't talk like that in RL. It's extremely affected.

Her fussing over the wedding seems so insensitive considering the other midwives who are clearly not wealthy, and the area the series is set in. In RL I'd imagine a lot of eye rolls, the way she discusses it over their meals.

Sister MJ and Sister julienne were from quite privileged backgrounds. Obviously Nancy and Phylis aren't, but some of the other midwives have been.

What irritates me is that the attitudes about single parenthood, pregnancy out of wedlock etc are just not accurate. There was a lot of shame and social disgrace and narrow minded thinking about many things. I doubt very much that the multi ethnic society all getting along absolutely marvellously would in fact have been the truth. It’s all written with a PC agenda. I find it really irritating. The attempt to portray racism was a tokenistic gesture that didn’t ring true. Racism was endemic amongst ordinary people, not just the extremist far right groups.

Imagine the headlines if Call the Midwife refused actors maternity leave 😆

Instead she was "busy" holding up tins for photos, like her condensed milk brings all the boys to the yard or something

🤣🤣🤣

"I could teach you, but I'd have to charge' 🎶 😅

Agreed that Trucie's voice is like nails down a blackboard. I find her incredibly irritating and a total cliche, much more so than she ever was in earlier seasons.

Do we know if Helen George actually speaks like this?

• Trixie's

But the nuns have renounced worldly things so I doubt they'd be interested.

Helen George's real voice.

I agree.

DH and I have a game whereby we play 'spot the PC theme' in each episode.

It's incredibly obvious.

Last night it was food banks (so nothing's changed, folks) useless housing plans, sluggish local councils, and of course the racist element.

The nurses etc are very 'understanding' of the unmarried women whereas the reality of those women, especially those who had their child adopted, were far from how it's shown. It was very much disapproved of even within the medical profession.

It's actually a bit patronising if the writer assumes we can't see this.

she's about half way there with her normal voice!

It's so irritating and unrealistic

2020 values

None of the main characters are ever judgemental

So why does she need such a posh voice in CTW?

I think it is because the storylines are written by young people with no historical perspective . They bring their current modern understanding and PC brainwashing to it and that just doesn’t work. The early series based on the books were much better.
I met one of the writers recently. A woman in her twenties!/ early thirties.

Sr Julienne's reaction when Nancy's secret was first revealed seemed a lot more realistic to me - if I recall rightly she was going to be thrown out of her nurse training? But that's all forgotten now and Collette is in and out of the convent whenever she fancies. I don't think so!
I was born in the 60s and brought up in a religious family and I can say for certain that most of the people I knew, both in the Church and in society generally, would not have been as understanding and tolerant as the Nonnatus nuns, in the 70s and 80s, never mind the 60s.

I got the impression she was trying to tone the Cut Glass down.

Indeed
Back in the late 1960s, the house I lived in until I was 3, and all others in the little area of East Greenwich, were demolished. We were housed as was my Nan.
There was a family who had 3 Children and were desperate to leave as, by then, demolition was happening all around them (same with my Parents)
They actually queued for days and days and in the end took a HUGE risk. They said something along the lines of "Well we adults can stand the cold and the mess but these kids shouldn't have too" and left them there and began to walk away.
It DID luckily pay off though. Poor Man was desperate.
Couldn't do that now or they would be straight off into the hands of SS

I think that's the way the character was written originally and she was sort of stuck with it.

Totally anachronistic and unrealistic.

The Shah family would most certainly not have won the Lovely Photo prize.

I started my nurse training in 1969. There were occasions when we would find out that one of our colleagues had vanished overnight, their room stripped bare. These were the ones who got pregnant - they were vanished away under cover of darkness, never to be mentioned again. Definitely no unmarried mothers.

Not good. The last series have been rubbish. As is this one.

That is exactly why her engagement to Tom didn't work out. As she was fussing over the canapé menu for the party, when his parishioners couldn't put anything in the table. She was too shallow for him.

To be quite honest, I am a bit bored this season. It all seems a bit formulaic. I also think they might run out of story lines

And, as others have mentioned, almost too PC. I'm not sure a husband would have so easily accepted his wife not telling him that she had a child out of wedlock. Yet the man last night just opened his arms and all was well. Not very believable.

Having another two seasons might stretch a bit too much. I think I would have preferred a neatly tied end with Trixie finally married and then a follow up (Christmas) Special however many years later when the nuns leave Poplar, IIRC from upthread sometime in the 80's. And maybe with all the "old" nurses coming back to say goodbye to Nonnatus House.

Trixie’s “posh” voice has always come across as fake to me.

the Matthew actor isn’t great normally, but he looked especially bored/couldn’t give a fuck last night.

felt so sorry for Cyril.

funny how “bureaucracy” is good when it comes to monitoring health but bad when it comes to managing housing. More than a bit two-faced.

how come wonderful Dr Turner didn’t
a) notice the spike in hepatitis and
b) berate himself for missing said spike.