Call the Midwife

[ajk]

Well I finally sat down and watched it today. Very solid, packed full of terrific stuff as usual...except at times the highs and lows were coming so rapidly that it got to be almost tiring. You need a chance to absorb things and catch your breath, especially in a series as emotional is this one is, and too often we weren't getting it. Surprising because the episodes almost always have just the right touch and pace to them.

But I'm not complaining, it's still the best thing on TV.

Two other things. One, surprised and disappointed we lost Sister Hilda. She was a good character--had the sort of plain-spoken directness about her that made me think back to Sister Evangelina. Just as we were getting to know her, too.  Apparently the actress wanted to move on to other projects. We've heard that before and I'll say the same thing I always say, why anybody would choose to leave this series is beyond me. But the heart wants what it wants. Geez I hope we're not losing Sister Frances too. Wonder why they sent her away.

And the other, the Sinatra song that Matthew and Nancy lip-synced to, what a terrific song! I've listened so so many of the big-band Sinatra albums but this one must have come from a different genre becuase I had never heard it before. Everybody in the audience was mouthing the lyrics so it must have been very popular at the time (and now I just Googled and found that it hit #1 in the UK in 1967, there ya go).  One of the many strong points of the series is how they work in the pop-culture stuff just enough for the setting and the times of the episodes.

[ajk]

Season 12 starts to PBS on March 19. Eight episodes, like usual, and they'll be available for streaming on the PBS website for a few weeks after airing.

[ajk]

...and they just announced that the series was renewed for two more years. It was set through season 13 next year, so now it will go to 15 seasons through 2026.

Have mixed feelings about this. You don't want something this good to stick around for too long and start going downhill. Including this coming season that's four more years of stories they have to come up with, and how many ways can you show a birth and keep it fresh. Plus as the years in the storyline tick away, the health care system gets more modern and the old-style midwives coming to homes isn't as big a deal. But if they think they can do it then they should get the chance.

[MTR]

I love the show but feel it’s run it’s course . The Christmas special was good but I felt like we had seen it all before .

I think it’s always best when shows quit while they are at their peak . However it’s super popular in the UK . The real Nonatus was St Frideswide Mission House in poplar . It was not condemned and still stands today . It’s a tourist attraction and is open to the public .

By the mid 60’s medical technology was advancing and midwives became a thing of the past . The sisters actually changed their mission to take care of the homeless . They left poplar and moved to Birmingham in 76 and are still going today .

We are in 1967 and still have nine years left as Britain went through the hippie era and the birth of punk in 75 ., I think the show needs a jolt . I really liked the last season with the train crash . That was superb . Maybe it was hard for the Christmas special to follow that ? . We still have a lot to get through i just hope the show can come up with some new angles . It was a turbulent time politically with the white nationalist Enoch Powell . The East end was one of the pillars of his support ( he didn’t last long fortunately and most of the country did not but into his poisonous rhetoric .

I really hope Midwife depicts this as they were right in the center of it .

[ajk]

New season is up and running! First two episodes are on the PBS website.

Just watched the first one. There I was fretting about the series going forward...first episode is wonderful, even season-8-worthy. What was I thinking. It still may start to wobble at some point with four seasons to get through, but wow not yet.

And you can tell how popular it still is. I always end up pausing and Googling stuff I'm not familiar with, and it's amazing how far up the prompts the searches always are.

[MTR]

I think episode 2 deals with Enoch Powell . This is the one I am really interested in as it was a really harrowing time . At the time I was too young to grasp what was going on . I was kinda glad in a way as Powell was the most loathsome piece of crap . The Eastend was his power base so it’s going to be interesting to see how they depict it ? .

The producers i have noticed while they cover all the important events they are always relegated to the background . It’s more about an acknowledgement of the passage of time rather than about the impact of the events . Each episode usually focuses on two characters and the people they interact with . Oh well I’ll watch it anyway .

[ajk]

It's still the best thing on TV...but fair is fair, have to call a major foul. Episode 2, clear case of empty cup fake-drinking. BOOOOOOOOOO

[MTR]

I was rewatching some earlier eps and caught them fake smoking 😃.

[ajk]

A little behind on this season but I'm catching up online and watched episode 5 yesterday. (The season is up on pbs.com until June 5.)

One thing came up in this episode that deserves some mention. Matthew's father had some sort of a pre-existing heart issue and in this episode he dropped dead of a sudden heart attack. Trixie ran upstairs to check on him, found no pulse and just started crying. My first reaction was Why the heck isn't she doing CPR on him? And apparently I wasn't the only one with the same reaction.

So I dug into this a little. Turns out it isn't at all clear that someone in her position in the UK in 1968 would have ever even heard about CPR. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was only developed in the late 1950s, and it wasn't until the early 1960s that The American Heart Association started advocating the complete CPR procedure to doctors. The first major CPR conference was in 1966, and the mass training programs for regular people started in the 1970s. Almost certainly the producers or writers or director would have wrestled with this--hard to believe nobody would have spotted it in the production process at the latest--and looked at the timeline, and decided it wouldn't be historically accurate for her to do CPR.

I wasn't crazy about Matthew's father being suddenly brought into the series and then killed off in the same episode. He had a bit of an evil-capitalist stereotype vibe about him, and seems like they could have done a lot more with him in additional episodes. But looking at the history, it looks like they made the right call on the CPR question.

[ajk]

Just got in under the wire finishing Season 12 on the PBS website.

For the most part it was a terrific season. The stories weren’t quite as powerful as the Season 8 stories—that season is the benchmark for me—but quality-wise the episodes were as good or almost as good. The marital rape story in episode 3 was especially interesting, seeing what the state of the law was back then. And the schizophrenic in episode 5, that was also interesting and probably long overdue. Have to think Poplar had more than its share of mental health issues back then and it would be something the midwives/nurses/nuns would be encountering regularly.

The only real problems were with the final episode. First of all, I’ve complained a bit in the past about the series sometimes trying too hard for a happy ending and avoiding ending an episode on a downer. This even showed up in episode 6—three really rough situations with few good options but the episode soft-peddled them at the end and avoided facing the worst of any of them. So the final episode comes, and it’s all supposed to be about Trixie’s wedding…and some unrelated person gets killed in a car crash? Seriously? And it was a terribly tragic situation, what with a baby involved and a dead mom. But they dropped it like a hot potato as soon as the Turners left the scene, and the only subsequent acknowledgement of it was during the otherwise—happy final montage, with the two fighting mothers-in-law hugging and crying, and the son holding his baby’s hand and just shaking his head. That was truly awful.

Another bungle was that after building all of the tension all season long about the fate of Nonnatus House, with the evil bureaucrats and the foreshadowing of possible big trouble, we learn that a benefactor has bought the building and they’ve set up an arrangement to keep the place going. This was the most important single storyline in the entire season, but the wonderful resolution to it was just sort of slipped in like the writers needed filler. Again, very poor thinking and writing here. The entire storyline with the car accident should have been completely extracted from the episode and saved for down the road, when it could get proper treatment, and the time filled with more focus on how Nonnatus House was saved. It served no useful purpose here and just got in the way.

Oh and also, apparently we were supposed to forget that at the end of the previous episode Sister Monica Joan was so sick with hepatitis that we were seriously wondering if she’d even survive it. Episode 8 starts and it’s barely even mentioned, like she’d had nothing more than a cold. UGH!

Much of the episode was wonderful. The wedding stuff was good, all except the too-forced hissy fit over the tiara. And Nurse Crane and midwife Nancy questioning their futures, those were both excellent angles. And the production quality was wonderful, as it always is. But good heavens it needed some heavy editing and continuity review because that part of it was an absolute mess.

But that episode aside, it’s still the best thing on television and is staying strong even through season 12. I still am concerned that they won’t be able to keep it at this level for the three more contracted seasons, but there certainly is no sign of consistent dropoff so far.