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Will it be all smiles after another dramatic Christmas on Call The Midwife?
PICK OF THE WEEK CALL THE MIDWIFE Christmas Day, BBC1, 7.40pm
Roll up, roll up, for the greatest show on Earth – as the circus comes to town to add an extra element of spectacle for this year’s festive visit to the nuns and midwives of Nonnatus House.
Now in its ninth year, the Call The Midwife special is firmly established as one of the seasonal favourites of Christmas Day, and one of a select few family-friendly programmes that can still command a multi-million-viewer audience near the top of the ratings.
One of the annual delights is witnessing how time has gradually rolled by in the continuing adaptation of the memoirs of the late Jennifer Worth. A storyline that began in the relatively grey East London of 1957 has now moved forward to an altogether more colourful, swinging Britain of 1965. Nurse Trixie Franklin (Helen George) is displaying more leg as the skirts get shorter – and with luck will finally be able to bag a husband, even if she has to resort to a marriage bureau, earning the memorable verdict from the snobbish matchmaker: ‘I am most favourably impressed with your dress sense, diction, poise, silhouette si and general sense of polish.’ Ti Time has moved forward inexorably, too, too fo for the increasingly eccentric and frail Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt), and after an accident leaves her ailing in hospital the others are worried that she may be forced to spend Christmas alone. Meanwhile, the most surp surprising star of the 90-minute episode p proves to be Nurse Phyllis Crane (Linda Ba Bassett), who is captivated by the smell of t the greasepaint and sawdust when ringmaste ringmaster Mr Percival (Peter Davison) leads his performing p acts – human and animal – t to stage their seasonal show under the big top.
Of course, the midwives and doctors are busy with their work too, and there are moments of almost unbearable tension when the lives of babies and mothers are on the line, although at least a plotline involving Percival’s heavily pregnant daughter allows Nurse Crane to offer the immortal line in an all-too-crowded room: ‘Just because you work in a circus doesn’t mean you have to give birth in one.’
There was drama, too, behind the scenes for cast and crew contending with the unique health conditions of 2020, requiring ingenious solutions to ensure filming could continue while adhering to social distancing. A show that was already pretty chaste now goes even easier on the hugs and kisses, but at least this is the one period drama where medical face masks won’t stand out.