Call The Midwife (BBC1)
Ronnie and Reggie Kray revered the nuns of Nonnatus House, or so says Dr Turner, in Call The Midwife. And he claims he’s stitched up enough victims of the East End gangland twins over the years to know.
If the boys ever had tried on the protection racket with Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter), they’d have got short shrift. One stern look and they would have dropped their knuckledusters before emptying their pockets into the poor plate.
Organised criminals in Hong Kong, the infamous Triads, are not such softies. A detachment of nuns and nurses, led by Sister J, dashed to Hong Kong after a church orphanage collapsed, in the first part of the show’s Christmas double bill.
But the Triad welcoming committee wasn’t much in awe of their wimples. The aid packages, including medical supplies, were ransacked. ‘These have been forced open!’ gasped Dr Turner (Stephen McGann). ‘It’s all gone.’
And when Sister Julienne handed over all the money they could raise, as a deposit on a new orphanage in Kowloon’s Half Lotus Street, a scowling thug took the keys off her at gunpoint.
Violet and Fred Buckle happened to be over in Hong Kong at the time, trotting about by rickshaw to visit their policeman son, Derek. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘Kowloon isn’t the East End. It’s about as dodgy as it gets.’
Ronnie and Reggie Kray revered the nuns of Nonnatus House, or so says Dr Turner, in Call The Midwife. And if the boys ever had tried on the protection racket with Sister Julienne ( Jenny Agutter), they’d have got short shrift. Pictured: The show’s Christmas special
Organised criminals in Hong Kong are not such softies. A detachment of nuns and nurses, led by Sister J, dashed to Hong Kong after a church orphanage collapsed, in the first part of the show’s Christmas double bill (pictured)
Dear old Fred (Cliff Parisi) stuck out his jaw defiantly: ‘It’s the same as Poplar, innit? Bad things happen, good people sort it out.’
That sums up the annual lesson of Call The Midwife’s Christmas specials. We’ve seen the nuns trapped on a Scottish island in a snowstorm, an escaped convict, and even a fire at a circus. But good always triumphs.
How our brave ladies will overcome the Chinese mafia in tonight’s conclusion is difficult to guess. It might require more than the power of prayer. On the other hand, Nurse Crane (Linda Bassett) is one of the missionaries, and Sister Hilda (Fenella Woolgar) has returned to bolster numbers. Perhaps everybody’s gonna be nun-fu fighting.
Back in Poplar, the usual festive baby rush was under way. A gypsy matriarch and her oldest daughter both needed the assistance of midwives, and it turned out that Dr Turner’s stand-in had no idea how to perform a forceps delivery… so that even venerable Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt) had to attend a birth.
Trixie (Helen George) is back from New York again, though her main role now is to be half of a double act with her Harley Street brother, Geoffrey (Christopher Harper). He’s meant to be adorable but camp osteopaths always make me think of seedy Stephen Ward, of the Profumo scandal.
Doctor’s son Timothy (Max Macmillan) is back, too, with a haircut straight out of a 1970s sitcom. He’s acquired a taste for cocktails and cigarettes. With the nuns away on the other side of the world, I’m starting to fear for Poplar’s moral standards.
