Call The Midwife Christmas Special

[PinkFrogss]

Anyone watching? Apologies if I’ve missed the thread.

Ah, sorry - I did Google it but somehow came up with the wrong date! I reckon they could probably still use it for the clog-popping episode, maybe towards the end of the series.... 🤔

I agree that Saint Dr Turner was a great character around the time he met Shelagh. He's too central now and pops up everywhere, explaining and solving things as he goes - from his surgery, the maternity home, the hospitals and the community.

I wonder if a Turner spin off has been considered? I don't know if I read that somewhere.

A lot of people on here hate Stephen McGann and write off his work. I agree that he gets a lot of screen time but for some storylines he is needed. A particular example was the story of a homosexual boy who went off to a seriously dodgy 'clinic' to get cured. Miss Higgins and Phyllis worked out where he was. They needed DrTurner due to his position as the lad's GP and who would therefore have some authority. If Phyllis had gone there without him she would not have been able to get him out. People on here will say 'once again Dr T comes to the rescue' but to my mind he had to be. As much as we hate it, in the 60s and 70s a man's word did have more authority. Unfortunately on these threads it is very rare that people are prepared to acknowledge that fact. Dr T isn't always used as the conveyor of info. In the Thalidomide storyline the mother of a fellow sufferer was the vehicle to provide background knowledge (I remember the scene of Rhoda and the Mum sharing a flask of coffee on a bench outside the hospital that both children were patients at).

It's becoming a soap. I might rewatch from the beginning.

Is that Vanessa Redgrave's actual voice? She sounds like she can hardly put a sentence together these days or is that the point?

If Call the Midwife does eventually come to an end I hope they do a prequel.

We've just started watching Series 1 again - it's so much better with characters and storylines

A prequel could be good @IdaPolly

Yes I’d love a prequel set in the war, I’d be fascinated by those kind of stories

Dr Turner rescuing the lad from his gay conversion therapy struck me as highly anachronistic. I reckon at that time a respectable and well intentioned GP with religious connections would have been totally in support of the practice and would have encouraged the lad to man up and persevere with the "treatment", horrendous though that may appear to 21st century sensibilities, because it wasn't easy to be gay in the 1960s and the lad had been engaging in high risk behaviour.

Geoffrey seems to be being set up as the new all purpose wealthy male saviour in preparation for Matthew's departure. Sourcing professional dressing-up clothes, curing Phyllis's bad back, what can that man not do?

But way back in an early series when a gay father to be was caught cottaging in a public convenience, Dr T stood as a character witness and told Shelagh that his experience in the war had made him tolerant. Also If no doctors had been sympathetic then the laws would never have got changed in the 1960s. Laws do not change in a vacuum. There must have been pressure from somewhere for the commission to decide it was time to decriminalise homosexuality in private. Why shouldn't DrT be one of those who could see that it did no-one any good for men to commit suicide because they could not live their true lives.

They should adapt the Evelyn Prentis books.

I must be the only mumsnetter who likes the Turners!

I like the Turners. But it would be nice to see them having an argument now and again, or Sheelagh losing it a bit with the kids. Make them more normal.
Fred and Violet have a much more realistic relationship. She is often exasperated by him and he often just nods along and agrees with her for the sake of a peaceful life. But you know they'd be lost without each other.

I agree about Fred and Vi. I especially remember the episode when Churchill died and Fred got his medals out and a picture of his late wife Betty. The fact that Vi got the picture framed to go on the sideboard showed how secure their relationship is now. They both had past marriages and Vi can accept that Betty was the love of his life but doesn't feel threatened by it. I would like her sailor son to make an appearance just the once!

She's been unwell. She has emphasema!

The Turners’ courtship was brilliantly done. It was one of my favourite storylines. Laura Main portrayed the anguish and confusion really well.

I enjoyed also, the one where Sister Julienne bumped into her ex boyfriend from when she was about 17, and he (understandably) called her Louise. She was a bit unsettled by his appearance but he didn’t make her seriously doubt her vocation, or anything. Much later, there was that episode where she was struggling - eating chips outside, with her hair on show, but it was a brief blip.

@PastorCarrBonarra I loved their courtship as well-so beautifully done.

I just think the longer stories like that aren't really in CTM any more.
It has lost it's way/heart a bit- it is much shallower and going for obvious tear jerking moments which don't touch me at all and I am a crier

Def heading to Eastenders territory and it is such a shame

I've read the first two books. Really enjoyed the first one, although found Jennifer Worth a bit judgy. The second one was nearly all about one brother and sister, and went into so much detail about their whole lives that she couldn't have got from just chatting with them. I decided not to bother with the third.

Jennifer was judgy. But she acknowledged it really. She was a very sheltered young woman who had never seen anything like the conditions on Poplar before so yes, she judged. But she also learned as she went along.

Yes. Early on when she visited Mr Collett with the bad legs. She didn't like his flat, made it obvious and upset him!

I felt she was judging from her position as an older woman looking back. 'Nurses uniforms today are so untidy', 'all women could cheat and pass the baby off as their husband's' just a couple of examples.

The bit that shocked
me was Jennifer complaining about how smelly women’s vaginas were at a particular clinic.

It really wasn't anachronistic. People seem to assume that attitudes were universally the same from around the 1930s right through the 1960s, but it it's just not accurate. In the 60s we were into flower power, tuning in and dropping out, and really there was pretty widespread acceptance of homosexuality. There was quite a lot of support for the change in the law in 1967 when it was made legal. I think it's perfectly in character for a GP with knowledge of the realities of life to be aware that gay conversion therapy could achieve nothing and was inhuman.

I read the books years ago and found them very patronising.

I agree

Probably to appeal to the American audience who watch it on some Channel over there.