I love Call the midwife (have been watching season 1-8 on DVD) and think the actors are just fabulous.
I was shocked (I'm not British) to see the poverty in the East End in the 1950s and 1960s...it made me think of the 1800s rather than the 1900s. Parents who could not afford to buy food for their children, children plagued by lice, diseases I believed to have been eradicated by then (I was born in 1969).
Someone here wrote that the characters portrayed in the series are the exception rather than the rule, and that makes sense since Britain was, after all, a highly developed country in the middle of last century (although many areas were of course destroyed during the bomb raids and had to be rebuild).
It's very interesting to watch how things we now take for granted - like the right to divorce or an abortion - were illegal back then, and how pregnant women were not allowed to work.
Another interesting and sad detail was what happened to children to mothers who had taken Distaval (thalidomide) during pregnancy, the so called "seal babies". One episode was particularly touching - that was the one where little baby Susan was born with deformed limbs but survived against all odds, and her parents kept fighting to give her as normal a life as possible.
Another really touching episode was the one where a pregnant woman gave birth to a black child that her husband immediately accepted and loved as his...although I never understood why the woman in question did not tell him for the entire duration of the pregnancy. She could hardly have thought she would be able to keep it from him forever...
Also interesting are small details such as people smoking everywhere in public buildings and hospitals, and even doctors smoking in front of their patients. It also seems every expecting mother was a smoker and that was seen as normal back then.
Another thing I did not know was that home deliveries were most common back then and women were sent to hospital only in case of high-risk pregnancies or if the baby was breech.
To me, this series is the perfect mixture of social realism, drama, compassion, love, hardship, and humanity. I admire the midwifes who worked tirelessly to care for poor and underprivileged women who could not even afford healthcare. The nuns are also wonderful to watch. I especially like Sister Julienne who runs Nonnatus House with a mixture of firmness and compassion.
Sister Monica Joan is in a class of her own - every time I think she's finally become dement she seems to become perfectly lucid again and then does or says something very clever when most needed.
Review of Call the Midwife
