One of my surprise favourite TV shows over the last few years has been Call the Midwife. Now, I’ve always watched a lot of British TV (when I was young, for quite some time the only TV channels we got in the country town where I lived were ABC (Australia’s national broadcaster) and a local channel and the ABC has always shown a lot of BBC programs) and I’ve always read a lot of English books (particularly older books, starting with my grandparents and school librarian feeding me classics like Enid Blyton and Noel Streatfield and E.Nesbit and Lucy M. Boston along with Peter Pan and others from a young age. So there’s I like British TV and I’ve always found British period pieces oddly comforting. But on the surface a story about midwives living with nuns in the East End of London doesn’t sound riveting.
But it is. And it’s often heartstring tugging as well. Which makes my writer brain stop and wonder why. The awesome Anne Gracie has often talked about achieving emotional depth/punch in a story through the “Keep it simple, go deep,” theory. And I think that’s what Call the Midwife does. There aren’t splashy effects and the costumes aren’t really spectacular like an earlier historical period would be and the stories focus on a small cast of people with the “babies of the week” factor for variety. But it takes time to build rounded characters and let them be real and flawed and struggle with things that crop up in pursuing their chosen career and their relationships. Plus a great group of strong female characters to boot. It takes time to let you get involved. And, yay for British TV that seems to give shows room to be this way (and doesn’t cancel things at the drop of a hat like the US networks can do). (Not to mention the show making one profoundly grateful for the advances in obstetric and paedeatric medicine since the fifties).
So two thumbs up to Call The Midwife from both a writer and watcher viewpoint. Who’s a fan?
I loooove Call the Midwife! It airs on PBS here in the states and I think season 4 is starting in a couple weeks! This show chokes me up almost every episode and I love how they are getting deeper into the midwives’ lives every season.
It’s great, isn’t it? It takes a fair bit to get me tearing up but they manage it more than most shows! Looking forward to the new season.