Okay -- I know I am WAY LATE coming to this party -- but my biggest television pleasure for a long, long time is Call the Midwife.
IT'S SUCH A GREAT SHOW. And, the best part is there are nine seasons for me to binge on!!
I love all of it...the time frame, the characters, the stories, the historical aspects. The time and place is 1957-1967 in Poplar, a poor section of London. There is no birth control, so 100 babies a month are born to women living in very cramped, unsanitary conditions. England is in the process of rebuilding after the war -- and they have started to provide free health care to their citizens. The framework that moves the stories along are the young nurses who work as midwives alongside the nuns of Nonnatus House.
Maybe it's only when we look back that we realize how far we've come...
This show makes you think about all of it. Before birth control, families routinely had a dozen children...and unwed mothers brought shame onto their families...mothers pretended their daughter's illegitimate baby was their own...the homes for unwed mothers...the secrecy around all those situations...there were no jobs, the government determined where you could live, high rise buildings replaced bombed out buildings, cramped conditions caused the spread of many diseases...TB, diphtheria, polio, then, the miracle of modern medicine -- vaccinations -- eventually, birth control...
I AM LOVING THIS SHOW....and I try to limit myself to only watching two episodes every night, after John goes to bed.
In one episode, Sister Evangeline is dealing with the affects of a stroke...her left hand is paralyzed...and she says,
nothing stays the same...when things change, we must find a different way.
Call the Midwife is my very FAVORITE!! Love love love it! All are such good stories, and they try to make things as authentic as possible. I remember in one episode, they showed an early version of Tupperware (a square round, I think) when Chummy brings food in it to her mother, who asks what that thing is! The vintage fashions are a special joy to see!!
ReplyDeleteDITTO, Charlotte!! And Trixie has the BEST clothes...I googled it -- and they use REAL newborn babies. I am really enjoying it...
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