a TV institution with fortuitous timing
There was a bonus for Call the Midwife (BBC One) fans, who number untold millions, at the end of the Christmas special. The credits revealed that it was only six days until the new series, the 12th. Truly, one is born every minute.
New year, old telly. One episode of Midwife is much like another. The show has become an institution and it’s hardly a surprise that it has morphed into an educational nostalgic soap opera – performed by a cast assembled with the full blessing of the BBC diversity ombudsman. Is there any point in highlighting the one-note characterisation or the right-on speeches delivered practically down the camera? You might as well argue with Jools Holland’s Hootenanny.
We are up to 1968. There was a new health visitor, Sister Veronica (Rebecca Gethings) who arrived on the back of a reputation for “a specialist interest in children and families with particular regard to preventative medicine.” “I thought we did that anyways?” said Nancy (Megan Cusack). “We do, we just call it nursing,” sniffed Phyllis. (Linda Bassett). Luckily, Veronica charmed her peers, bringing chutzpah verging on impertinence to her role.
The Big Political Issue was Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech. Lucille (Leonie Elliott) was upset by his words. Doubtless immigrant nurses were put out by Powell’s speech. But would they have said “the damage is done, he has said that resenting immigrants is acceptable,” as Lucille did?
Probably not, but what’s the point in minding. Nobody is watching Midwife with these things in mind. They are watching for a harmless nostalgia trip, to see woolly 21st-century liberal values projected into the past. The creators can’t have known the timing would be so fortuitous with the nurse strikes. But the accidental political angle, about how we value those who care for us at our most vulnerable moments, is more effective than the overt race-relations lesson.
At this rate it will last forever, but Call the Midwife, like The Crown, will catch up with current events. There
is a looming question: who will play Matt Hancock?
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