Call the Midwife 2015

So glad Fred and Vi got together

Yes. I'm glad my earlier fears of it maybe running out of steam have been unfounded.

Love it.

That is interesting Jess as I was becoming mildly irritated by the issue based scripts. Chacun a son gout! I still enjoy it though and particularly liked Una Stbbs' performance.

I have found a couple of the latest episodes very moving, such good acting by all the cast not just the regulars.

However it does jar with me that they all have perfect teeth, even the most poverty-stricken and malnourished!

I think all of the series present and past have been very good.

There can be some quite hard hitting stories and this series has certainly continued to be unafraid of raising them.

Immigration, homophobia, wanting a male heir, unmarried mothers etc. etc. . I think a lot of people 'think' it will be a mushy programme and not bothered to watch , a shame it is a good series.

Ana if you want to watch TV featuring imperfect teeth I can recommend S4C

Well, I suppose I could watch it, but I wouldn't be able to understand it!

I don't particularly want to see 'imperfect' teeth, but in nearly all tv programmes, including soaps set in deprived areas and period dramas, the characters have glowing white gnashers and it's totally unrealistic.

Maybe they all use my grandma`s teeth cleaning method, soot and salt, she swore by it for lovely white teeth!

They all had great teeth in Wolf Hall

Oh no this is not for me- I watched the first two series but after that I cant possibly go through another labour I didn't enjoy midwifery as a nursing student.

DD and I both love it. My friend who is currently working as a midwife can't watch it as she spends a lot if time moaning at the TV

I can understand that I can't watch any hospital dramas they have usually got so many things wrong- I know I know its fiction!!!

It is now in the era of our (that's me and him - known each other for about 55 years) of our early youth, so the soundtrack is evoking memories - it was "Only the lonely" at one point. And I am remembering the fashions, and the make up too.

We both commented on the austerity of the hospitals, compared to the warm, bright places which we have visited recently..

I watched this from the start (having already read Jennifer Worth's book) and agree it has maintained a very high standard of story line and acting. I am a Pam Ferris fan but all the cast is first class.
However, were living conditions in the East End really as grim as that in the early 60s? I was a young mother with a baby in 1960 and, although I was not living in London, my parents lived in south west London and I visited regularly. We were a working class family and our lives were certainly not like that.

Was it not just before the building of the high rise flats which were erected to get families out of appalling living conditions ?

Yes I think they were grim daffydil - in her sequels Worth describes them in some detail - tenements with a row of shared toilets in the yard etc. I was also surprised as housing in S Wales was nothing like as bad at that time.

Conditions in the East End were that bad right into the 70's daffydil. As a student in London I lived I some very grim places but the ultimate was a tenement block which was given? to the University of London students as the flats had been declared unfit for habitation. The families were very gradually being moved out but many were still there when we left in 1975. No proper kitchen, no bathroom, two rooms to double as living room/ bedrooms housing whole families. Happy days!

Living in London in the 60's could certainly be as is portrayed, we lived in a house with 5 families, no bathroom and one toilet was shared between 3 families , we were 5 children sharing one large bedroom with a coal fire in the living room. The kitchen was a butler sink, a gas stove and one pantry cupboard, it was extremely basic.. so yes things were like this for some..

Many multi occupied houses in Hackney in the early 70s. Families living in two rooms sharing toilet facilities.
Poor cooking facilites and paraffin stoves for heating, which caused dreadful damp. Poorly insulated council flats with no heating. It was bad.

My 'happy days' was tongue in cheek by the way, just in case anyone thinks I was being flippant. It was bad enough as a student but awful to see how families had to live.

When I got married in 1967 I went to view a flat, it was one room with an oven in a cupboard and bathroom facilities on the next landing down. My parents lived in a modest semi but it was a palace compared to the flat.

My grandmother lived in that area after the war because that was where her OH worked, although they were very middle class she did have lots of local friends because of the babies bringing them all together at the clinics just like the ones portrayed. She remembered it as a very happy time, but was appalled by the living conditions of some of her friends. She said she had bath and tea afternoons for some of her friends.

Yes my sister was a London student in the 70s and shared a ramshackle house without a bathroom and stables (with horses) in the yard. Used the public baths. Huge numbers of terraced houses across the country had government grants to give them proper bathrooms and kitchens.