Call the midwife

[TwinklyFawn]

The call the midwife christmas special is on bbc 1 in 2 parts. The first part will be shown on christmas day at 20:00. The second part will be shown at 19:30 on boxing day. Series 14 will start on 5th January. I am suprised that it has not been renamed as the doctor Turner show.

I’ve never been an avid fan of the show, and hadn’t watched it for a few years, but I watched the Christmas special and really enjoyed it and have started watching series 14 as a result. I’ve also started watching older episodes on Iplayer.

I’m shocked at all the hate shown on here towards Dr Turner and I don’t understand why - he’s actually my favourite character, and also my Mum’s too. It would’ve been normal for him to have a lot of involvement in women’s healthcare since he is a Doctor, and also a man in the 1950’s-70’s when society was very different and female Doctors weren’t very commonplace.

@SprinkleOfSunak it's because it's supposed to be a show about midwives and women. But has turned into the Dr Turner show. And his family is nauseating.

They got the 'immaculate conception' wrong, actually. It means Mary was born without original sin, conceived without it. It has never meant that Mary conceived a child without sex. In the 1970s at school our teacher told us about a mistake on an O level exam paper - Catholics know what the immaculate conception really meant but some others taking the paper did not.

Really irritates me when people mistake it for the Virgin birth!

I often wonder what the late, very much missed Victoria Wood would have made of CTM. The sort of telly she would have sent up mercilessly, I'd imagine.

I can see French and Saunders doing a wonderful piss-take of CTM.

Jennifer Saunders would be Trixie and Dawn French would be Sister Evangelina.

@Toddlerteaplease

🤣 I see!

I have found them all very sweet so far, but maybe if I watch a few more I might start to see more of what others are seeing.

I dislike doctor turner because i feel as though he is lecturing the midwives.

@TwinklyFawn

I’ve not picked up on that yet - maybe I need to watch more.

Surely a lot of men back then though may have been a little like that, and so his character is quite historically accurate? And even more so given his status as a Doctor?

I am old(ish) and think he is of his time. CTM pre-dates the Sex Discrimination Act and it was a time when clever girls became nurses rather than doctors.

Also, let's not forget that in hospitals and surgeries across the land it is still commonplace for women to be addressed with less respect than men. Listen up in many outpatient depts. Many staff call the men as Mr Fred Smith; the women as Jane Smith. Notwithstanding the habit of Dr's to assume they may use the patie t's fjrst name whilst introducing themselves with their title and expect to be afforded more respect and courtesy than they offer. The NHS is still beset with shocking equality issues.

It’s his smugness that I can’t bear. He wasn’t smug at the start. He and Sheila are an epic tower of TV smugness.

They might have tried, but the midwives would have rightly put them in their place.

You have a case of thrush 😆

He was okay in the earlier series. I have just gone off him. Yet i hated phillis when she arrived. Now i love her.

I don't find the Dr Turner actor to be a convincing actor. I'm always aware that he's acting so can't get into it as much.

Wasn't it a dose of thrush? 🤢🤢

That's the problem with it. Mr and Mrs CTM as married-to-each-other writer and producer/actor have cooked up a self-indulgent part for him to play, full of clunky doctor-saves-the-day storylines and stories based on "ishoos" of the day. Not content with that the brave viewer has to endure that grinning Scottish Stepford nun/nurse and their cardboard cut-out family.

As a result of this indulgence they have created a sugary horror comedy. It's why I asked at the beginning of this thread if the good and visionary doctor had predicted Covid yet, fully expecting to be told that, yes, in series 152, Covid prediction was indeed the storyline.

I've never watched Call the Midwife but seen clips of it on (Not) Lorraine this morning and see it's now in the 70s. Was never interested before but think now it's the 70s it would be quite good. Is it possible to just start from this new series or would I need to start from her beginning to understand what's going on?

I would start from the beginning. Some of the characters have been their from the start so you would gain a deeper insight in to their character.

It was much, much better in the earlier series.

I have forgotten what she said. I was trying not to fall asleep.

I just feel as though he will end up delivering every baby even when the birth is straight foward. When call the midwife started i did like him. I honestly didn't feel like he was lecturing anyone. It is like he has changed.

also a virgin in biblical times meant a young woman as in “you young men and you virgins”

I find it a bit odd that they've never introduced a female GP/ob-gyn/ hospital consultant. They certainly existed in the 60s and 70s, and yet CTM only ever seems to cast men in these roles. Even when it's a training scene in a hospital, it's always a group of young men standing round the bed. I wonder what the figures for women entering medical school and qualifying as doctors were in 1970? (Although they were invariably called 'laydee doctors' and continued to be by my parents etc.)

I think I only remember because it gave me the Ick 🤢🤢🤢

Not many female doctors around and certainly not in high up positions. I'm reading "life in her hands" at the moment which is Averil Mansfield's memoirs. She was a surgeon in the 1970s and it says that only 2% of her colleagues were women.