“We are like a family of the nation”: why the call of the midwife is better than all other Christmas specials

Enemas, placental rupture, dead babies: call the midwifeThe first Christmas edition didn’t scream “celebration”. Then, on December 25, 2012, the midwives of Nonnatus House were called in to care for the unkempt, desperately lonely Mrs. Jenkins. Five of her children had long since died in the workhouse; In the episode’s climactic scene, they sobbed over their icy, unmarked graves.

“It’s such a pathetic story,” said Stephen McGann, who told Dr. a gymnast is playing. “We wondered if people would want this for Christmas. If this is your first time, you don’t know what Christmas will be like for your show.

Needless to say, Christmas went well call the midwife – really good. In this first special, the company has turned its usual gimmick of turning human fear and harsh gynecological truth into a beautiful story of kindness and community. The specials attracted up to 9.2 million viewers overnight and became as synonymous with Christmas as Morecambe and Wise were in the 1970s, huh? Only fools and horses in the 90s or downton abbey in 2010 On Sunday we go for our turkeys with the inhabitants of Poplar for the 11th time.

How did a show about mucus plugs and afterbirth, about the grim realities of London’s East End in the 1950s and 1960s, become the centerpiece of BBC One’s Christmas programming and one of television’s longest running traditions?

“No one has ever said: “We want 10 years call the midwife‘. I think I would have been hurt if they had done that,” says show creator Heidi Thomas. The program had a special Christmas special in its second season, but she says she didn’t realize how important that part of the day became until her own family saw it a few years later, even though it was “a complete Basman holiday.” them before. .

“I am just like any other mother in Britain. I run all morning with a black garbage bag and say, “Put the bag here!” Then call the midwife Special included. You can’t relax like that,” she says. “But I sit down with my brother, my husband [she is married to McGann], my son, my nephews, their wives and we watch it together. Even though I exhausted this Christmas special, I wouldn’t trade that hour and a half for anything.”

Look beyond the bloody tweezers, of course, and the show’s themes are Christmas gold. With its timeless yet reassuringly progressive values, it offers us the comfort, joy and vintage knitwear our heart desires this time of year. Or, as McGann put it, “We’re not a serial killer program.”

“Our show is about how people want to think of themselves and each other,” he adds more seriously. “The questions asked are very simple. Who do we want to be? How will we take care of each other?

“That’s why it fits with Christmas. Because we ask the same questions at Christmas. Why are we getting together? Why do we create traditions at this time of the year and why are they important to us? Christmas is a community in a microcosm. This is when the family comes together and rebuilds. This is what call the midwife force.”

Nuns and newborns are the (royal) icing on the cake. “Children always bring hope for the future,” says Jenny Agutter, who plays Sister Julien. “You have a blank slate. We want this blank slate to be written as well as possible.

call the midwifeAt Christmas, the midwives traveled to South Africa and the Outer Hebrides (“I thought, ‘I’m not sure about this place,’ Agutter says). They gave us booming mom Miriam Margolis Mildred, plus two weddings (Shelagh and Dr. Turner in 2014, Lucille and Cyril last year) and storylines about everything from circuses to the big freeze, heroin, leeches and polio.

Office had a legendary farewell in 2003 to its two-part Christmas finale. 2019, Gavin and StaceyThe tinsel-adorned show 10 Years Later became the highest-grossing scripted program of the 2010s. call the midwifeIts durability even gives it an edge over the most popular specials. With the ability to draw on a decade of past releases, it has a monopoly on what Christmas is all about: tradition.

“We’re kind of a country family,” says McGann. “You get used to the behavior of individual characters. sister Monica Joan [Judy Parfitt] goes to watch TV. Fred [Cliff Parisi] always dresses like Santa Claus. To be call the midwife At Christmas. It’s what you do.”

The only thing that won’t happen? “No one dies at Christmas,” says Thomas. (It is only fitting that the first special aired on the same day Julian Fellows was rebuked by the audience for the murder of Dan Stevens. downton abbey on ITV.)

“In a show where people feel very interested in the characters, you have to take them through their mournful journey. So if anyone ever died on Christmas call the midwifeI would make sure it was at the beginning of the episode.

But just like the first special, call the midwife never avoided social and emotional realism. It may seem like a tea party, but we all already know that with his compassionate, quietly subversive approach to issues like abortion and domestic violence, he’s about as comfortable as one of the birthing chairs in a maternity hospital.

Thomas doesn’t try to pretend that Christmas is perfect. “I understand how difficult Christmas is for some people, just because it happened to me,” she says. “Recently at Christmas, my mother became very ill. It was her last Christmas: she died long before the new year. Christmas can seem very alienating when you’re in that position. Especially this year – it was 2018 – I remember going to Tesco for shopping. You see everyone with their carts full of all these goodies and you see colorful lights and bottles of Baileys everywhere. And you don’t belong. You cannot be part of this wave of warmth and joy. In many ways, I’m writing a Christmas special for people who were in the same place as me at Christmas.

This year’s special continues after the devastating train crash that ended the last episode. We also visit the Mallak family, whose daughter Susan was born with shortened arms and legs caused by thalidomide and now does not participate in the nativity scene due to her appearance. The plot for Thomas is “close to home”. “I had a brother with Down syndrome who also used a wheelchair.”

Susan’s father is plagued by alcohol and financial problems.

“It’s about families struggling to survive, who can’t take care of their kids at Christmas, who don’t have heating for themselves and their kids,” says Helen George, who plays Trixie. “I can’t remember a year when it was more relevant.”

Good old Fred invents a talent show called “Poplartunity Knocks” to cheer everyone up – Thomas says it’s a toast to a (hopefully) coronavirus-free holiday season. “It’s a metaphor for all of us to work together as a society and hopefully have the kind of Christmas we’ve been missing for the past few years.”

Some writers seem to think that Christmas is an excuse to get out of the plot. Thomas couldn’t get away with it even if she wanted to: call the midwife“Special” is more of a series opener than a standalone episode, so there should be a strong dramatic streak, although that comes with it being filmed alongside the rest of the series in April and May.

“It can get very hot. We wear coats, scarves, hats and gloves and try to remind ourselves that we are very cold,” says Agutter. (Think of poor Cliff Parisi in his Santa Claus costume.) The only beauty is snow – “ It freezes you just looking at it.” That’s non-negotiable at Topol.

Shooting in the spring sometimes presents other obstacles. The tender scene on the Sunday episode between Trixie and her boyfriend Jonathan (Ollie Ricks) was filmed during the May weekend. “Everyone was in the pub all day, so the hardest part was getting the shots so that people didn’t scream obscenities,” she says. “We were trying to have a romantic moment, and the background was just drunk men in Chelsea.”

Then there’s the eternal Tom Cruise problem. Yes, you read it right. The actor shoots the last mission impossible Installed in the same studio in Surrey as call the midwife and lands in his helicopter right next to the Nonnatus House film set.

“We’re all a little mad at Tom,” sighs George, who looks a lot like Trixie, teasing his rebellious father-to-be.

“He literally tramples all the scenes. You do your best and then he comes in. Can you imagine how noisy a helicopter is when it lands near your house? He also started taking his buddies with him: Matt Damon was there a few weeks ago. It’s ridiculously crowded with celebrities and their helicopters.”

But that can’t dampen the cast’s joy at being reunited for each new episode. “At least 50 percent of the crew stayed the same from the start, and a lot of the cast stayed from the start,” says Agutter. “So it feels like we’re back together with ‘Christmas.’ It’s fine.”

Fans will have the same opinion about reuniting with the show on Sunday as we gear up for the usual Christmas cocktail of snowball fights, roaring newborns and Vanessa Redgrave’s aggressive tear-jerking voice-over. Eleven years later, he is as wise and sincerely comforting human relationships as ever: It may be a show about having children, but its overwhelming focus is on the families we create for ourselves and the strength they give us.

“It shows us a community in a world where the community is not always the strongest, at least not in our country,” says George. “I think we’d all like to be a little more call the midwife“.