Call the Midwife

Pleasant viewing. Nice to see SA. The formula for the programme is obviously popular. Are they struggling to come up with more local scenarios? It was a bit unrealistic for so many of the staff to just decamp for 6 weeks.

I thought that doing a Christmas "special" set somewhere else might be rather corny and unconvincing but, as always, Call the Midwife was brilliant.

We both enjoyed this immensely. Me C comments in the plots and sub plots plus some good characterisation. I can understand that but I just love it in a human level too.

Dh was messaging his brother who lives in SA while I was watching it - it's too soppy for him.

DH and I really enjoyed it, and were quite choked at the end!
Looking forward to the new series.

Perhaps even more moving tonight because we were in South Africa recently and recognised some of the places.

And also because I just didn't dilate with our first one- and had to have an emergency section after 11 hrs of labour- and I know we would have both died had a section not been available.

Anyhow- a wonderful series.

I love it!

This is a programme that I have never watched.

Are you watching? So moving- I am balling my eyes out here.

There is no particular evidence that atomic radiation causes birth defects in later-conceived children. This from Wikipedia:

No statistically demonstrable increase of congenital malformations was found among the later conceived children born to survivors of the Nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[11][12][13] The surviving women of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that could conceive, who were exposed to substantial amounts of radiation, went on and had children with no higher incidence of abnormalities than the Japanese average.[14][15]

The deformities caused by Thalidomide were thinly spread across the population so it took the medical profession a while to realise that there was a pattern emerging.

Getting back to the TV it is a great series with wonderful actors (the exception being the wooden clown Fred).
Still see to have a drama which is all about women, with women at centre stage and men only being peripheral characters.

Well, I did not think I would be confused with Call the Midwife, good Sunday evening telly. Then I read a post mentioning Tuppence and Jim Broadbent. Love Jim Broadbent but sure he was not in Call the Midwife and who the heck is Tuppence. Then it dawned, the thread had morphed into War and Peace. Silly me.

Oh Marelli wasn't she a little darling? Those big innocent eyes searching her mum's face, wondering why she was crying. Poor little sausage had no idea

Indiana good point about the real parents.

Indinana, I hadn't known that....(that the limbs/head had been superimposed), and couldn't understand how showing a baby in such a way could've been allowed.
Wasn't she just a lovely wee baby?

I was amazed and intrigued by baby Susan when she was being examined - such a clever and frighteningly realistic depiction. I know the first episode used an animatronic baby, but surely the face and head of the little one last night was real and not computer generated? Superimposed onto an animatronic body?

And if so, it got me thinking about the baby's real parents and how they would have felt seeing their little girl as a thalidomide victim. Not sure I'd have been able to watch it in their shoes.

They announced the Christmas special at the end.

I thought the vicar was going to be married before the couple get into "mischief"!
The death was handled beautifully I thought, as was the outing of thalidomide as the culprit of the deformities (sorry, what a horrible word).
Such good acting by everyone. Is there definitely going to ba another series?

I thought that the young midwife (who is carrying on with the vicar) would be the one to die from some flea-borne bug, as a great deal was made of the rats/fleas and her reaction to the bite. Maybe this plot line will pop up in the next series.

Trying hard not to give away a spoiler

If I noticed this thread had been brought back to the top of 'actives', but hadn't yet watched the episode, I certainly wouldn't open the thread! If anyone does and sees a spoiler, they shouldn't be surprised really

Trying hard not to give away a spoiler. I had read about the final scene but not who it related to. Wasn't who I'd expected.
DD and I were of the same mind regarding the black guests at the wedding. Would that have been as unusual as we thought in 1964 ? I believe DD found that the law changed 12-18 mths after this.

Yes, I see the doc's started smoking again...

The poor doctors who prescribed the drug with only the intention of helping the mothers, the mothers who took the drug in faith and trust , all innocent yet there must have been so much guilt felt

Last night's episode was so distressing, watching that poor, poor woman as the realisation hit home how little Susan had been so badly damaged. The baby looked about the same age as my DGD and it broke my heart to see her looking up at her mother, with the same interest and level of intelligence. Horrific to think of the real life cases, how those mothers must have suffered.

And Sister Evangelina

I had my first baby in 1963. Fortunately I never suffered from morning sickness in any of my pregnancies, because if I`d been offered this "miracle drug" I would have gladly taken it.

My Mother was very sick when pregnant with my brother in late 1959, he was born spring 1960. Mum was offered a drug to control the sickness but declined. Her friend also suffered from sickness, took prescribed drug and had a child with severely deformed and shortened limbs. The GP in Call the Midwife was working on his own, no computer records to access, we do forget how easy it is to find things out now.