Spoilers ahead! Big spoilers! Except… also in a way maybe not spoilers? Because none of the main characters died! It was touch and go with Sister Julienne for a bit but she lives to nun another day.
No, instead of being a story about how Nonnatus House deals with a loss it was actually about how a bunch of people we’d barely even met before, and how they dealt with a loss. The Corbett family, the Carnie family and Carol, whose lives ended up fusing together in such tragic ways. And I’ve heard people say of this episode, “That was it?! The writers amped up the drama and threw in a cliffhanger for nothing?!” but I loved it. I think it was a very brave move. Those characters I just mentioned were almost complete strangers to the audience, but Call the Midwife has always been about compassion to strangers and how that’s one of the things that makes us human.
Some personal context to tonight's #CallTheMidwife ep. I've been in a deadly disaster myself. It's cruel, but ordinary in its cruel lottery. Absolutely part of life. Also, my mum lost twins like Carol. My brothers. They were placed in a coffin with a stranger. xx
*CTM spoilers for last week’s episode* Interview with Heidi Thomas in the RadioTimes.
I get free access to some of the TV magazines with my library card so let me know if there are any others of interest (although it might take me a while). Also let me know if anyone needs the text transcribed. I had to crop some of the photos to make the text clearer but they weren’t any new ones I don’t think. No major spoilers for the next episode, only for last week’s but still a really interesting interview!
…just in time for the characters on the show to be caught up in a terrible tragedy! CTM’s never really done anything like this before, so let’s play a traumatic guessing game about who will survive the cliffhanger and who will “merely” be horribly injured!
So, I will be furious if Dr Turner dies right after having an argument with his son. Jeez Timothy was unsympathetic in this episode, I guess this was all the teenage angst we never saw in him finally coming out. I suppose I can’t complain since he always seemed a little too perfect but WOW, TIMMY. Anyway, the odds are against Dr Turner dying, I guess, since Stephen McGann’s wife writes the show. (And he himself wrote the book you see above!)
Sister Julienne is probably the more likely train crash victim of the two, in the end shot she wasn’t moving while Dr Turner sort of was, plus I kinda feel like… She would be the obvious choice to kill off as she’s been a bit surplus to requirements as of late? Plus, though she remains progressive for a nun, her traditional views and strictness are starting to grate at this point in the show. (A part of me wonders if they’re killing her now so she won’t be rendered incredibly unsympathetic once the Abortion Act 1967 becomes part of the show?)
Then there’s Nancy, who walked out of the train but took a massive knock to the head, and I wonder… It would be a very CTM thing to do, her seeming to be okay but then passing away from internal injuries no-one checked for. (Or maybe Bob Saget’s incredibly sad cause of death is on my mind.) I hope she doesn’t die, though, because that would mean her poor daughter was all alone in the world.
Mr Corbett is almost certainly dead, unfortunately, and just as his wife was about to give birth, aw man.
Meanwhile on the ground I think Mrs Wallace might lose sight in her injured eye, also yes I was among the people yelling “NO CYRIL DON’T GO BACK IN THE BUILDING” when he went to look for her, luckily nothing happened to him and Lucille was spared further tragedy.
Dang, what an episode! I was on the edge of my seat throughout all of it.
I’ll always love Call the Midwife but I’ve felt it’s been getting a little repetitive as of late, doing the same kinds of storylines over and over and not really evolving as much as I know it can. (It’s hindered a bit by the constantly rotating cast, I always thought.) Well, the Christmas Special changed all that! Really good. Full of both callbacks to the past and hints of what the future might look like. Lucille and Cyril got married, everyone got a bit more closure over Barbara’s death (finally) and I got to learn how important leeches are to medical science. Hooray!
My only real quibble is that Valerie wasn’t there or even mentioned, I forget where she ended up in-show but she really ought to have been at the wedding.
Long may it remain one of the most quietly (one might even say sneakily, considering the current state of the BBC) radical shows on televsion. Pro-NHS, pro-abortion, pro-women, pro-LGBT, pro-disabled lives, pro-socialism. This all sounds incredible when I write it down but please, please do not underestimate the importance of this show…!
The end of Call the Midwife tonight totally got to me.
Jeanette’s mother is a fucking monster.
But I am wondering if they intentionally wrote it to show the other side of a story like Angela’s, because I remember that it was mentioned that she was given up at the last minute because her biological mother’s parents had changed their mind about the girl being allowed to keep her baby.
