Call The Midwife - Christmas Special

This was a very touching and poignant episode.

The show kept the strength of its first series in this special with two great stories of love and fear, which further showed the poverty and social situation of the 1950s east end. The first story I want to talk about was that of Mary-Ann Jenkins, an elderly woman living in poverty and horrible conditions. It turns out that she was a victim of the workhouse system and that all her young children didn't survive the ordeal. It was very good how the central character Jenny Lee was determined to help Mary-Ann to improve her health as well as her mental and emotional state.

This led to a scene where Jenny took Mary-Ann to the site of the public grave in which her children along with other workhouse inmates were buried. The simple script, along with the way Jenny pointed out the location of each of Mary-Ann's children and Mary-Ann's controlled reaction worked superbly well to great a very powerful and heartbreaking scene. It was then good to see how Jenny had helped Mary-Ann to regain control of her life and help out with the nativity.

The other story saw teenager Lynette Duncan giving birth and out of fear abandon her new born with the midwives. It was interesting to see how she had to keep secret the fact that she was the mother in the fear of losing her family and when she collapsed due to complications and her parents discovered the truth we saw how they in the end came around to supporting her. This was done through midwife Chummy Noakes, who, as well as providing most the comedy in the episode through her trying to put together the nativity performance, showed a good amount of strength and support for Lynette and was able to convince her that she would be able to take the baby back.

The main cast gave great performances, while Sheila Reid gave a fantastic performance as Mary-Ann and Ami Metcalf also did a good job as Lynette.