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 thought Lucille had depression following a miscarriage.
I'd forgotten about all the social distancing in drama...what a strange couple of years.

The depression was initially triggered by a series of racist incidents and threats. Infertility issues compounded the situation. A lot of migrants at this time when back home where they were more valued and appreciated for this skills after a decade or more of trying to fit in and being subject to regular racism. One of the weaknesses in CTM as years have gone by has been the skimming the surface of social attitudes, particularly with respect to race and sex, in a way seriously minimises them to a new generation.

I still watch but I agree with the point that its time to call it a day and hopefully the new series will be a bit more realistic and a bit “it was all very nice really”.

I think most dramas mutate in this way after a few seasons. Remember when Casualty was a hard hitting drama about a failing health care system? And within a few years it was fully transformed in to feelgood soapery.

Some of it is a bit silly, but some of it feels like it's based on real memories again, didn't they ask for stories/memories from HCPs from the correct period at some point? The overheard comment about the "monster" last week felt as though it could have happened this way, although I was not sure whether the couple viewing the stone baby in the medical archive would have happened like that or whether it was wishful thinking to write up a happier ending. Plus the link to Sister Veronica's own feelings about her childlessness was obviously fiction.

I also felt there was something about a local GP attending a house call where a whole family had died and noticing the grammar school blazer hanging up, making the connection to his own child and the owner of the local shop being upset at being investigated - I could see those three events happening as a real memory someone had had. A whole family dying like that would have really rocked a local community, especially if it was a tradesperson a lot of people knew.

The family dying is definitely more towards the older series. Last series would have had them all miraculously recover.

I feel like Rosalind is more in love with being a modern woman and a feminist and being daring by sleeping with a married, black, man rather than being love with Cyril himself.

They do seem to be building up to them moving on to missionary work though. I suspect a bit of stereotyping and them moving North to find the poverty and roughness that they used to have in the East End. The woman with Sister J at the end was such a clumsy plot device and a caricature of every woman who gave birth in a slum in n the early series.

I thought the whole family dying was quite a good story for newly qualified Timothy who everyone is congratulating on qualfiying, to now face the potentially tragic reality of the role. A bit like Dr Turner did with the thalidomide story. You are right though it did feel like a real story somehow.

I think the woman living in squalor was a drug addict and the order did move to Birmingham (I think) to work with drug addicts when midwifery was taken over by the NHS.

She did seem a bit random and I assumed a combination of opiates and prostitution. I got the point that it was almost a callback to their earlier work and it was reminiscient of some of the stories from the books, but it is very jarring compared with the more recent series because you'd expect the crash social team to jump in there and turn her life around or something. Or at the very least have Cyril personally investigate and declare her an unfit mother, but I suspect as someone else said that her and the baby will simply never be mentioned again.

With the couple from Hungary a couple of weeks before and the Agata storyline, did anybody follow what happened with them both having similar burn injuries? I thought initially the husband was abusing both women, but it was the wife who was burning Agata because [she thought] she hadn't conceived a baby, was that right? I also thought it was a slightly odd ending showing the couple just sitting grumpily at their kitchen table together, what was that supposed to show?

I suspect given the profile of the actor we may well see this character again and it become an ongoing storyline.

OK. I didn't see who the actor was. I still think the point was to signpost the next move for the Order.

Am I the only one who has doubts on whether CTM is going to work on the ‘big screen’? As this is apparently the plan for the film after the current series.

I think it will flop massively. It’s nice comfy Sunday night viewing but is it really something people will pay to watch at the cinema. It may have worked for Downton, but I think it’s a slightly different audience. I’m not even sure it will work for Peaky Blinders, but that’s coming to Netflix a couple of weeks later.

This Christmas episodes (which are film length) are not as good as the normal series episodes. I really like CTM but I won’t be going to the cinema to watch it.

@notimpressedatm is it planned as a cinema film?
I assumed it meant "feature length episode" that will be shown on TV.

I saw this quote on the Radio times:

"As the classic Call the Midwife series moves further into the 1970s, it also seems the perfect time for our much-loved regulars to take a short break from Poplar and test themselves in an unfamiliar landscape," said creator Heidi Thomas when it was first announced in May last year.
"The rise in hospital births, and changes in the NHS, have clipped their wings, and this is their chance to take flight and work out what really matters... it is going to look absolutely fantastic on the big screen!"

Im not sure that I can watch big screen birth scenes!

@notimpressedatm oh ok.
To be honest I thought the Downton films were a bit rubbish for the big screen.
I'll still go and see it (the Call the Midwife one) though.

I thought that the downton films were rubbish so i don't have high hopes for the call the midwife film. I will probably end up buying it on dvd as i will end up spending a fortune at the cinema. I would be far too tempted to go shopping as well and i will end up getting a load of crap that i don't need.

I would really recommend the book ‘shadows of the workhouses’ (part of the CTM book series). The reality of it was so, so much worse than the TV series which is heavily sanitised and prettied up for feelz.

There is no episode of call the midwife next week due to the baftas.

That book was so sad. Jane's story stuck with me.

Sister Monica Joan has made me laugh.

I find her very annoying to be honest.

Love Sr MJ. She really made me laugh. The ice cream man has got breast cancer.

I think Rosalind will have a blood clot with the pill.

They’ve done the blot clot with the pill story before. Maybe you’re right, but it would be a bit repetitive.

I diagnose breast cancer for the ice cream man. Dr T won’t think about it because he’s a man.

Rosalind is up the stick.