Call the midwife: delusional or inspirational?

First off - I love Call the Midwife, I feel I should make that abundantly clear before I start this post! Come Sunday nights I look like this:

And I think you'll agree that that's a pretty sexy look - Well done Beeb, Well done Heidi Thomas-McGann, Well done Call the Midwife - you make me look like that! But some of my lecturers have discussed weather Call the Midwife is a force for good, or for evil ... (Well not quite evil, but you get the gist!) This year, there has been a massive boom of midwifery applicants - because girls have been watching the program and falling in love with the idea of being a midwife. Which is great, I don't think anyone is disagreeing that more people need to get into the field with real conviction and love for the profession.












But, just as anyone who wants to be a nurse after watching Carry On Nurse, is setting themselves up for a crushing disappointment, anyone who thinks that the world of midwifery and nursing is like Call the midwife is asking to be smashed in the face with a bowl of sputum.

Now, I don't think for a moment that anyone at the beeb, Jennifer Worth or Heidi Thomas-McGann were trying to create an advertisement for midwifery, and if people truly believe that the story of four nurses, four nuns, a wheeler dealer handyman, a overworked unloved GP and a police constable working in the tenement building of Poplar 55 years ago is an accurate depiction of life as a modern nurse working in the NHS - then they deserve to be disappointed and are fools! I mean if I stepped towards one of my patients with a spirit lamp they'd run a mile, and if you think that I get to spend my days delivering pig shit by hand to my patients (... you'll have to watch the series) then you'll be sadly disappointed.

However, I think all the people (including the university interviewers, some of whom have a blanket "mention CTM in your personal statement or interview and you're not getting in" policy) would agree that while CTM doesn't reflect the work of being a nurse or midwife, it does reflect the heart behind the work. I love my work, it's heart breaking, it's life affirming, it's terrifying and it's wonderful , but it also involves an awful lot of paperwork, mind-bending calculations and some highly confusing bio-chemistry from time to time. There's a lot of work that isn't nursing but treating the patient.

CTM is a fantatsic show, it's full of love, it's about powerful strong women who help other equally strong women give birth, with grace and heart and a passion for their vocation. And I think that they a fantastic role models, for young girls, young women (like me), older women and everyone in between. It's beautifully written, with sensitivity and real respect for the profession and the lives of the women it features. It weaves together the sometimes hard to deal with lives of the poorest people in London, featuring abortions on the kitchen table, abusive parents, teenage prostitutes and the nightmarish memories of workhouses, with the sweet and sometimes odd lives of the residents of Nonatus house. It also features the sexiest doctor on TV since the lovely Luc Hemingway left Holby City. And not just any Doctor, a doctor who's sexiness caused a nun to leave her calling - we're talking THAT level of sexiness!

The lovely Dr. Luc Hemmingway off Holby City Vs The lovely Dr. Patrick Turner off Call the midwife

There is also some utterly fantastic acting, which I think isn't mentioned nearly enough in reviews, There's the outwardly streetwise blond bombshell Trixie, who is totally devoted to her work and her patients, and not nearly as experienced as she pretends to be. We have the quiet and kind Cynthia, utterly caught up in her work but able to be strong and work with total conviction, the emotionally damaged and polo-neck lover Jane. The protagonist, naive Jenny, off men since a love affair with a married man that she could never have, who starts the 1st series out of her middle class depth.

Aside from that, there's the always brilliant Jenny Agutta playing the stoic Sister Julienne, Judy Parfitt as the fast declining demented Sister Monica Joan, and the young Sister Bernadette played by the frankly stunning Laura Main, who managed to do losing her faith while falling in love wonderfully! (Falling in love with Dr Turner incidentally - and hey, who can blame her!)

I think CTM is one of the best Dramas on tele at the moment, it's well written, well acted and with compelling story lines. It reminds me why I wanted to be a nurse in the first place on the days when I forget, and I think it can show us all how fantastic that, not only doctors, nurses and midwives but the NHS as a whole is. The mothers in the show are getting fantastic care because of the NHS, still then in its infancy, care that 15 years earlier they wouldn't have had, and if people see CTM and realize that - then that can only be a good thing. But - CTM can only be great when it's audience watch it for what it is, the dramatization of one woman's experience working for the NHS 55 years ago, it's wonderful - but it doesn't represent the NHS today, which is a pity, because I would love one of those hats!