Call the midwife

[NimbleHiker]

The Christmas special of call the midwife is on bbc 1 in 2 parts again. The first part is on at 20:15 on Christmas day and the second part is on at 20:30 on boxing day. I am not a fan of the Christmas special been in 2 parts. I wonder how doctor Turner and his simpering wife will save the world.

I was a single mother in the early 90s and I was definitely judged.
But I was living in a very rural area, maybe in a city I wouldn't have been judged so much?

@AgeingDoc they are divorced /in the process of divorcing

Heidi Thomas, the main writer, was born in 1962. She really should remember what attitudes were like in the 1970s. I am very close to her in age and I remember the hushed voices and disapproving looks of some neighbours talking about the teenage daughter of another neighbour who was about to marry her boyfriend. I was 9 and vaguely grasped that she was going to have a baby, which was puzzling, because at that age I believed that women only became pregnant after they were married and it was somehow all God's work. That would have been about 1970.

I can well believe that attitudes changed in different places and social groups at different rates, though. In London in the early 90s when I was having my children a lot of the women I met were either single or cohabiting but not married. It didn't seem to be a big deal, which slightly surprised me, because very few of my colleagues had had babies without being married. Accountants were very socially conservative in those days!

The divorce was probably a "blink and miss it" moment.

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/call-the-midwife-cyril-lucille-divorce-newsupdate/

But he's now back in Poplar, with some very important and deeply sad news.
**
"Lucille asked me for a divorce," he admitted to Mrs Wallace. "She doesn't wish to return to London, and I do not wish to live in Jamaica."

My cousin got pregnant in 1994 and was pretty much made to marry the father aged 18. So yes, ‘Respectable working class’ judging alive and well, well into the 1990s where I was from

They are divorced or in the process of getting divorced (I think Cyril got divorce papers in the mail?).
But I agree most people would have found the relationship concerning at least in 1971, with him being older than her and divorced never mind being a different race. They’d have perceived it as him “taking advantage”

Also around ‘94 my friend’s older sister got a summer holiday job babysitting a toddler a couple of days a week - she’d have been 16/17. Her parents initially didn’t want her to do it in case people assumed she was a teenage mum!

There were interracial relationships in the 1970s (I was in one later on in the decade). There would have been a lot of people who disapproved but also many who accepted it. If there hadn't been things would never have changed.

The CofE Sisters that I knew were lovely by the way.

Not everywhere though. I was an unmarried mother in 1980. People may have looked down on me but I didn't care.

It isn't as good as what it use to be. However i think that there have been a few good episodes in series 14 and 15. I think that there were too many happy endibngs in the earlier series like that woman on the ship in series 2. When it was based on the books i found the books far darker. Ps doctor turner will always annoy me.

I'll miss some of these characters when the series ends. I guess if they had realistic attitudes of the time we wouldn't like them.

The newer episodes do seem to come under the "The Heartbeat School of Fake Nostalgia" scriptwriting genre 😂

Just wondering if Christopher doesn’t recover or is adopted whether his father will come after the Turners? Think he threatened that he expected his son back in Hong Kong.

I agree that it's sanitised and quite fake in sine parts but there have always been more liberal minded people around. If there hadn't been society would never have moved on.

One of those spin off documentaries about Coronation Street on ITV mentioned that when Chris Tyldesley married Gail in the late 1970s there were hundreds of letters of complaint because it was showing a "mixed marriage" (she was Church of England, he was"Roman Catholic").

I preferred the 70s series of Upstairs Downstairs because it seemed more realistic in how it depicted attitudes to unwanted/ out of wedlock pregnancy suicide etc

I’m 68 and remember the Tomorrows World episode that mentioned them.

I was thinking last week that there’s something brewing with Sister Veronica and Geoffrey.

In the Christmas nineteen seventy four episode of Steptoe and Son Harold finds Alberts birth cerificate and finds out the latter was illegitimate Albert says To be a child of love back then was a stigma not like today with these actresses having dixie lids and boasting about it.

Is it me or do the fashions seem a bit behind the times?

I’m ok with people wearing outdated fashion. People wouldn’t have the latest fashion in the East End and would make clothes last for years. Trixie used to be the fashionista but I assume had to rein it in after the financial snafu (and now I assume all Matthew’s business profit is going on school fees and transatlantic flights.

He must be coining it in now he's running the A&E department at Holby General though!

[Nurse! The screens ...]

Even in the early series the Nuns made it clear they treated, they didn't judge (incest etc).

But I'm sure that would extend to the nurses love lives, like Nancy.

The fashions don't bother me. I assumed that people from the east end had to make their clothes last longer.

He did mention getting a divorce in series 14. His cat died in the following episode.

I had my first in the year 2000 it was still a scandal