Nurse Trixie’s top trick? Using her silk stockings as a lasso!
CoNVENt- IssUE thermals on, everyone. Call The Midwife (BBc1) was heading to the frozen north, where it was bucketing with rain and blowing a Force ten gale. Much like the whole of this year, really.
It took more than beige longjohns to cramp Nurse trixie’s style, though. the midwifes and nuns trekked by train and ferry to the outer Hebrides, and trixie (Helen George) apparently lugged an entire wardrobe all the way. When the mission from Nonnatus House first set foot among the benighted scots, who had no medical facilities within four hours, trixie was wearing santa claus red, trimmed with fur and set off by a jaunty bluechecked trilby.
Five minutes later she’d changed into an outfit with a white fur hat, a stole as long as doctor Who’s scarf and a muff like a snowman’s head . . . all in mink.
at least, I assume it was mink. Perhaps she’d shot a polar bear.
Later, trixie used her silk stockings to lasso a calf, before sweeping along the headlands in knee-length boots and a purple sheepskin that would make delBoy blush with envy.
Even Melania trump probably doesn’t travel with so many jungle on I’m a celeb, fed handfuls of sixpences into a coinbox to make a long distance phone call that lasted barely 30 seconds.
this was 1965: the electricity kept going out, and Nurse crane fought off flu with syrup and onions. that’s the sort of thing Mr Wilson meant when he talked of the ‘white heat of technology’. technology made The Snail And The Whale (BBc1) a wonder for grownups to enjoy, as well as a delightful tale for children.
adaptations of the books by poet Julia donaldson and illustrator axel scheffler have become a christmas staple since the success of the Gruffalo ten years ago, but none has featured quite such detailed computer graphics before.
Many of the shots appeared to be modelled on iconic imagery from sir david attenborough’s Blue Planet films, in particular high aerial views of the humpback whale tracing a rollercoaster path over and under the vast ocean currents, and of penguins cavorting among the ice floes.
this painstakingly natural look was hugely impressive, something to be enjoyed even if you weren’t watching with little ones entranced by the rhyming story of a ‘snail with an itchy foot’ who sets off to see the world.