Strap in for Poplartunity Knocks, a local talent contest in which all of our favourite cast members get to show off their many hidden skills. But he has an idea to bring everyone back together. “It’s like … we’ve all lost a bit of heart, or who we are,” he says. Since then, things just haven’t been the same. Fred is going through the books and trying to work out why there have been so many defaulters on the Christmas saving scheme, before realising that some were caught up in the catastrophic train crash that ended season 11. Photograph: BBC/Neal Street ProductionsĪs always, it juggles a handful of storylines of varying degrees of seriousness, focusing on a main pregnant woman, a b-side pregnant woman, what the nuns are up to, what the nun-midwives are up to, what the midwives who are not nuns are up to, and what Fred in the shop is up to. Zephryn Taitte and Leonie Elliott in the Christmas special. But even without prior knowledge of Poplar’s social scene, this is about as lovely and comforting as TV gets. It barely bothers trying to bring in any more newcomers, assuming that if you’re watching, you’ll know exactly what Trixie has been up to in Portofino, and why it’s nice to see Rhoda Mullucks and the Mullucks family back in the care of Dr Turner. There are far worse traditions than Call the Midwife, which has reached December 1967, and is only just starting to feel as if it has been on telly since then. And whether you like it or not, you will get some mildly traumatic childbirth nestled inside a sneakily socialist message about the importance of social care and well-run, well-funded public institutions.
You’ll get dancing, you’ll get a female impersonator, you’ll probably get a soap opera wedding the day after an ill-advised Christmas Eve stag do. Much like each family’s rules for the correct time to open gifts (morning, obviously, you afternoon monsters), there is no room for compromise. On BBC One on 25 December, it’s Strictly, EastEnders, Mrs Brown’s Boys and Call the Midwife, and you’ll get what you’re given, so shut up and be grateful.
There is something admirably stoic about British television’s refusal to budge on to its beloved Christmas TV schedules.
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