Review: Call The Midwife (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Review: Call The Midwife

5:15pm Friday 8th February 2013 in Reviews By John Anson, Features editor

IT’S all the fault of the Christmas Day special. The better half has developed a liking for Call The Midwife.

The Beeb’s Sunday evening wallow in nostalgia, set in the East End of the Fifties, follows the lives of, well, midwives as they trundle around on their bicycles delivering babies at every opportunity.

It’s a strange mixture of a programme, a cross between those paperback sagas with titles like Wounded Heart, and the movie Alien. Every episode contains at least one fairly graphic scene of childbirth which is definitely not for the squeamish — certainly don’t watch while having your tea! But for all its tweeness – accents are either “cor blimey guv” Dick van Dyke or the plumminess of public information films – there’s something bizarrely watchable about the whole thing.

For a start it’s entertaining, which is more than can be said about that other offering from the Beeb set in the East End.

And despite the fact that everyone having a baby appears to live on the same street, it’s a programme with plenty of warmth in it. Miranda Hart recently left but there’s still a top-notch cast including Jenny Agutter and the wonderful Pam Ferris.

It’s not cool to admit it, but Sundays and Call the Midwife are the perfect fit.