Always on Sunday: Call the Midwife (TV)

We didn't watch a feature film this week. In fact, my wife hardly watched anything other than what she could catch by looking up from a hospital bed after surgery on Monday, and back home since Thursday she is not supposed to have her left knee in a 90° position for more than thirty minutes at a time. Not that either of us has had energy left over from our altered routines to concentrate on a good movie—or TV program either.
    I did manage last night, however, to watch the sixth and concluding episode of the first season of the BBC TV program, Call the Midwife. And a good one it was, but all six episodes have been first-rate, and we—I think I can speak for my wife too—highly recommend it. I'm not sure how you're going to watch it now, though, since the season is over. We recorded it from our local PBS station, UNC-TV.
    The Internet Movie Database's summary will serve to orient you:

Based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth; the story follows twenty-two year old Jenny, who in 1957 leaves her comfortable home to become a midwife in London's East End slums. She expects to find a hospital, and is surprised to find that the clinic is a convent: Nonnatus House. Working alongside her fellow nurses and the medically-trained nuns, Jenny has her eyes opened to the harsh living conditions. But she also discovers the warm hearts and the bravery of the mothers; each one a heroine in Jenny's eyes.

    "Harsh" does mean harsh. Some of the dark, dirty, ill-appointed homes the midwives go into are not just places where poor people live, they are also places where babies are born, sometimes without any prior visit to school the would-be mother in preparing for the delivery.
    And the drama among the nuns and nurses and the nurses' friends and families is at least as interesting as that among the staff and their clients and their families. Good writing, with generous helpings of humor as well as engaging drama.

I have nothing bad to say about the program, nor does anyone else apparently. Says Wikipedia:

The Fall 2012 PBS transmission of Call the Midwife, series one, in the United States received wide critical acclaim, earning a Metacritic score of 8.0 and a very high user score of 9.3. The Wall Street Journal declared that "this immensely absorbing drama is worth any trouble it takes to catch up with its singular pleasures," while The Washington Post stated that "the cast is marvelous, the gritty, post-war set pieces are meticulously recreated." TV Guide called the series "a delight to watch," while The San Francisco Chronicle described it as "sentimental, poignant, and often heartbreaking."

    You can read detailed synopses of all six episodes of Season 1 on the Internet Movie Database website. No synopses are yet available of the planned eight episodes of Season 2.

You might also like to know that there are associated books you could read:

Call the Midwife is a memoir by Jennifer Worth, and the first in a trilogy of books describing her work as a district nurse and midwife in the East End of London during the 1950s. Worth wrote the book after retiring from a subsequent career as a musician, and it was originally published in 2002. Reissued in 2007, it became a bestseller, as did the sequel, Shadows of the Workhouse (2005, reissued 2008), and the final volume, Farewell to the East End (2009). By the time of Jennifer Worth’s death in June 2011, her books had already sold almost a million copies. In 2012, the popular BBC adaption of the trilogy boosted sales further, and all four of the author's books about the East End (the "Midwife trilogy") and In the Midst of Life (2010) went back into the charts. –Wikipedia