Call the Midwife review, Christmas Day: A jumble of grotesquely tear-jerking storylines

Like his brothers (Paul, Joe, Mark), Stephen McGann, who plays the kindly Dr Patrick Turner in Call the Midwife (BBC1), seems a decent enough actor. But I doubt even the greatest of thespians could have made much of his lines in this year’s Christmas episode, which are so bizarrely written that they become a little parodic.

Take his exchange with a new cor-blimey-cockney-lumme-Poplar mum Mavis Hollier (Bronwyn James). Having dropped her sprog, to use the professional term, on the cobbled streets of the capital, she’s been referred to him because she is suffering from pain “down below”. (Because, apparently, no one in the East End in the 1960s had the remotest notion of their own anatomy, and only spoke in euphemisms). Dr Turner, on the other hand, uses big words, talks like a medical dictionary, and has an unfortunate turn of phrase, as you see here:

Dr Turner: “You poor thing. You have a vaginal haematoma, a massive collection of blood under the skin. It’s been getting bigger and bigger since you gave birth.”

Mavis (gawd bless her, up on stirrups): “How big?”

Dr Turner: “Well, if you’re looking for a more seasonal image, about the size of a tangerine.”

Mavis: “Eurgh.”

Quite right, Mavis, and a reaction shared, I think, by the whole nation. I mean, who wants a vaginal haematoma the size of an easy peeler for Christmas?

Having said that, the jarring mention of the word “tangerine” in such a heavily gynaecological context is sufficient to give me the biggest laugh of the holidays. It has me in stitches, just like Mavis. I guess, had the haematoma progressed, it would have graduated to Christmas pudding proportions, and then to the size of a family turkey. Well, they say laughter is the best medicine.

You might ask precisely what the screenwriter has against McGann, lumbering him with material such as this ­– but the author is in fact his wife, Heidi Thomas. I wonder what their pillow talk must be like?

I also rather wonder how I possibly missed the national appetite for a whole 90 minutes of this helping of sentimental guff, with no advert breaks, and alleviated only by rare moments of unintended dark humour.

Call the Midwife’s Christmas special is, basically, just a jumble of unrelated, grotesquely tear-jerking storylines. There’s a consignment of doll-like refugee children from Hong Kong, seemingly screened for maximum cuteness; a nativity play featuring yet more mega cute kids; a real-life donkey; an orphaned brother and sister reunited. The only connective tissue is the goody-goody nuns of Nonnatus House, holding it together with prayer and tears of joy.

This last pairing is a sort of turbo-charged dose of emotionalism, as the sister had been packed off to Australia, like they used to in them days, and married off to some brutal Aussie farmer, and now returns preggers and frightened. Her long lost brother meanwhile – get this – has a club foot, but still manages to cop off with a woman from the typing pool. And they’re all going to spend Christmas together.

Mavis’s vaginal haematoma cleared up, by the way.

Anyone in any doubt that the British would really rather live in the past has only to cast an eye over our period-drama packed telly schedules to find ample evidence of such national atavism. Call the Midwife even contains scenes of nostalgia for something called a “carpet sweeper”, a forgotten contrivance you had to use if you couldn’t afford a Hoover.

Everyone in the East End of Call the Midwife is nice and kind and tolerant; but where are the Kray twins, nailing gangland rivals to the pub floor? Mods and rockers kicking the living shite out of each other? The flick knives?

As Mavis might say, eurgh.