I’m feeling emotionally drained this morning having watched back-to-back episodes of Call the Midwife last night. First there was the 90-minute Christmas Special, followed by the 60-minutes first episode of Series 11. There’s just so much you can take of good intentions, love of fellow-man and joie de vivre.
The Special, I think was set in 1966. There was the usual young woman giving a difficult birth which was resolved just as the Christmas bells were ringing, the couple whose relationship is mended by the waves of goodwill and tidings of great joy and the appearance of snow at the last minute. As a bonus, there were three Christmas babies this year. All bases are covered by the inclusion of good-hearted gangsters, West Indian refugees and a loveable young man with Down Syndrome.
Each Christmas Special touches on a controversy of the times; this year it was the aftermath of the Atomic Tests on Christmas Island – did the sailors and scientists who were there sustain any lasting health damage which might affect their ability to have children? This is not the Christmas Island which is now a detention centre; it’s the other one, part of Kiribati in the Pacific.
Miriam Margolyes made her usual visit to the convent in this episode, playing the irascible but soft-hearted Mother Superior. Critics say that she’s a ‘character actor’ but she only plays one character – herself. We saw her recently in another Christmas Special, set in the High Country of Victoria and you could not tell the roles apart. Still, if she makes a living doing this, who am I to criticise.
After all that warm and fuzzy bombardment, I’m looking forward to a nice, complicated murder solved by some scruffy, hard-drinking loser of a detective.
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