I know lots of people have started at S1 again and made the point about the quality drop off already, but I have to admit it’s stark.
The lines are less clunky in the earlier seasons but I actually don’t think that’s the main reason for the change in feel. One thing that stands out is the huge cinematographic shift - a lot of the shots in season 1 especially are actually remarkably beautiful in and of themselves. There’s a shot a few seconds long of Dr Turner and a father smoking outside in the garden in wait while the man’s wife is giving birth inside with a couple of the midwives. It genuinely had a touch of the Renaissance painting about it, a totally banal little scene but it was visually quite spectacular. Lots and lots of examples of things like that. They were much less in a hurry, happy to let a quiet unshowy shot unfold over 20, 30 or more seconds before cutting away. Even the really gut-wrenching scenes were so much more subtly done. I can’t imagine, for example, the “holy silence” scene where they all knit together while waiting for news of Chummy and the baby, or the scene where Jenny shows Mrs Jenkins where all her children are buried done under the current “style” of the show. All feels so much gaudier and soapier.
The other thing of course is that so many of the characters have been Flanderised. Worse overall with the men, I think. I was totally taken aback by the zero scenery chewing Dr Turner engaged in back in series one, it’s like a completely different character. What seems key is that the flaws that come across on screen now as both totally consuming of the character’s identity and unintentional are directly acknowledged as facets of the individual in the early serieses - it is literally
openly insinuated by other characters that Turner, while clearly a kind and principled man, is a bit pompous, childishly gung-ho about any medical breakthrough purporting to be world-changing, moralising and pleased with himself etc. I think part of why the romance is so much more compelling before Shelagh ditches the wimple and they marry is that they felt like real, imperfect people rather than horribly earnest mouthpieces for each episode’s Issue du jour. Similar for the other male characters - Fred is funny but has a wry quality that’s gone missing later on, he doesn’t just feel like he’s there for comic relief. Peter is suitably sweet and dutiful and adores Chummy etc but you see his little flashes of temper with her and general truculence. The camaraderie between Cynthia, Jenny, Trixie and Chummy feels so real - Trixie is another one whose character has lost dimension over time and, like Dr T, whose shortcomings now feel strangely accidental and unacknowledged.
The dialogue for/direction of the one off characters (the mothers, for example) has particularly suffered, I think. There are still lovely performances but I struggle to think of of a single mother that’s felt even even 30% as real as Lorraine Stanley’s Pearl in the very first (or maybe second?) episode. The moral of each thread of the story felt organic and incidental and now each episode feels like it was put together for the express purpose of making a particular moral point. Also not an original point on my part, but it’s really suffered for becoming less female-focused.
I still enjoy it a great deal but characters like Phyllis and Miss Higgins and Sister Julienne are very very load-bearing at this point.