Masterpiece’s Call the Midwife, a costumed import from the BBC, has been billed as the new Downton Abbey based on purely superficial similarities. Downton is a posh soap opera paralleling the lives of the upper crust and the servant class in Edwardian England.
Set almost half a century later, Call the Midwife is something altogether different, a medical drama, a coming-of-age story, and a survey of the Dickensian poverty that remained in London during the late 1950s. Admittedly, I haven’t read the Jennifer Worth memoirs on which this series is based, so I swoop through this series with fresh and somewhat unbiased eyes. (And I’m unspoiled by advance episodes.)
Our audience surrogate is Jenny Lee (Jessica Raine), a wide-eyed novice nurse dropped along the streets of East End London, caught off-guard by the wolf-whistles and catcalls of men as she strides by. Through voiceover, Vanessa Redgrave (with that unmistakable voice) tells us that Jenny could have been a model or a pianist, but that she’d chosen the midwife trade. Our “heroine” stumbles upon a catfight that would be quite fitting for a Real Housewives episode, with an older lady battling a young woman over the latter’s dalliance with the former’s husband. (It’s as soapy as the show gets within the first hour.)
Jenny watches the slugfest alongside a cheering crowd, not quite sure if she should intervene or safely keep her distance, until a full-figured nun steps in, recognizing one of these bruisers as a patient and setting the whole lot of them straight. And this nun is played by none other than Pam Ferris, who is certainly not to be toyed with:
Jenny arrives at her destination, the Nonnatus House (an actual place in London), where Sister Monica Joan (the kindly Judy Parfitt) greets her. We quickly learn that this sister feels vibrations and looks after a potted plant with the devotion of a loving mother. She’s nutty but in an innocuous way, and she invites her new friend on a hunt to unearth a coconut cake in the kitchen. They find their treasure, and Sister Monica Joan almost force-feeds young Jenny her slices.
Next, our cast of nuns and nurses amass in the kitchen: the blond Trixie and the brunette Cynthia, Jenny’s fellow budding midwives; Sister Julienne, a motherly figure played by an ageless, luminous Jenny Agutter; and Sister Evangelina, the intimidating figure we first met in the streetfight. Sister Julienne suggests they all enjoy a slice of cake – i.e. the cake that Jenny had just devoured with Sister Monica Joan’s help. This is the most Downton of the scenes in Midwife: a dinner table chat set to plucky music to signal lightheartedness and comedy. Evangelina, doing her tut-tutting nun act, tries to identify the culprit behind the missing cake, while Jenny squirms sheepishly in her chair. “It was coconut,” says Sister Evangelina, “which is a very insinuating ingredient liable to smear itself all over the consumer’s face.” We notice a hint of tension of Sister Monica Joan and Sister Evangelina, which may play itself in upcoming episodes.
READ MORE: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2012/10/call-the-midwife-recap-episode-1/
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