Call the midwife

It was just like Casualty where you know the person with a headache at the beginning is bound to come a cropper.

Is next week the finale? This series has flown. Looks like it's going to end on a sad note. Hope it won't be Sr Julienne, but suspect it might be. They've been moving her downstage this series.

My thoughts too Beswitched I did feel sorry for the pregnant 16 year old, life was not easy for some young girls then.

As soon as they got on that train I knew. There was no real reason to show them on a train, so it seemed likely that something was going to happen to it. A bit too obvious as a plot device, but I was gripped nevertheless.

I was irritating DH by predicting the script! (As usual)
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Beswitched

Saw speculation on another thread that Phyllis might have been on the train. They did make a point of saying she was back in England. It would also explain Sr Frances saying something about it being the end of Nonnatus House, if Sr Julienne and Phyllis are both gone.

Didn't Phyllis go off in her car?
(I may have nodded off, I do miss bits of programmes)

Was it her car or did she go in a taxi or am confusing her with Trixie?

Oh dear, was it only last week ....
I've forgotten

Phyllis went off in a taxi to go on a coach trip around Europe.

It's turned into full soap mode. Lots of cliff hangers and of course, a big disaster.
Past its sell by date?

That was my thought Aveline - they've turned it into a soap. I was disappointed.

Yes once dramas start introducing these major disaster storylines you know they're running out of material.

I also found Sr Frances' beaming delight at the legalising of abortion all wrong. Likewise Sheila's reaction. Have the writers actually met or spoken with any very religious women?

kittylester

I suspect that Sister Julienne has something wrong and the bird foretold of her demise!

just realised I'm a week behind - ignore me!!

It did seem rather like a soap opera. You just knew what was coming and not approached especially well in my opinion. I fear it may be time to call it a day.
Am I correct in thinking Trixie had gone to nurse her Godmother in Portofino? They mentioned a postcard she’d sent from Naples. It’s the other end of Italy from Portofino!

I agree with Aveline and Grandmadinosaur, I’ve enjoyed it through the years but feel it’s now run it’s course. I read an article last week from Stephen McGann saying the last two episodes would contain shocks and something tragic, so was not too surprised by the very predictable ending last evening. I think the stories now have strayed a long way from Jennifer Worth’s original stories. Such a shame she died before it was televised.

I'd miss it but think it's probably time to call it a day. Several characters seem to have run their course. Sr Julienne has come across as bored and fed up at Nonnatus House over the past couple of series, Trixie looks out of place and like someone who desperately needs to move on, and Phyllis is obviously approaching retirement age and now has the financial means to do so.
Poplar would also have been rapidly changing by the late sixties. Most women would have been having their babies in hospital and a welfare state would have been running a lot of the services traditionally supplied by the sisters. The demolishment of the old tenements would have altered the feel of a community once populated by families who had known each other for generations. A huge migration out to the newer suburbs, particularly by younger people would have been another radical change.

Probably time to give Trixie her happy ending, retire Sr Monica Joan to the mother House, let Cyril and Lucille buy a house somewhere and start a family and, presuming Sr Julienne has died in the crash, charge Sr Hilda with guiding Nonnatus House into a new and different future.

Yes, time to say goodbye. It's run its course.

I don't ever remember nuns running maternity services but perhaps they did in some areas. Even in the 1950s and 1960s there were NHS maternity homes, local clinics where pregnant women went for their checkups or to he GP surgery.
In the 1970s any midwife I came across worked for the LHA or out of the GP surgeries.

The nuns seem to be in charge in CTM which seems odd to me.

Just caught up tonight. Well, that was weird.

My first baby, born in 1969, was born in local maternity hospital, and there were some Nuns amongst the staff there. This was in East London.
Dreadful place that maternity hospital, NO showers, and only three baths for all patients (ante and post-natal). When a baby was born very sick at was immediately transferred to local hospital, leaving the Mum a couple of miles away from it.
This was closed down a couple of years later. New Maternity Unit build at that hospital.
My next baby due in 1970, and I was told that it would HAVE to be born at home even though we had no indoors or upstairs loo. Best of all the deliveries I had.

I hadn’t watched CTM for a few years, then binge watched it from the very beginning after reading comments on here. I agree with the rest of you, it’s definitely past it’s best now. The difference in the quality of the scripts between the early years and now is very noticeable.
I was really irritated on Sunday when Nancy expressed surprise when Sister J said that gas and air had only been available for about ten years, as a trained midwife should she not have already known this?

Front cover of Radio Times this week - “DON’T DO IT! Bump off Sister Julienne? No! A nation begs Call the Midwife creator Heidi Thomas for mercy”.
Article inside says that two more series of the show have been confirmed, taking the cast to New Year’s Eve, 1969.

Oh dear.

I really don't fancy a new series of CTM with Nancy as one of the central characters.
When you recall Chummy, Patsy, Cynthia , Barbara et Al it just shows how much the quality has dropped.

Looking forward to tonight's final episode of Call the midwife, after last week's train crash.
Who survives? & who's being written out of future series?