Call the Midwife (TV Series) Christmas Special (2012) User Reviews

BBC at its best

[iandbaldwin · 10/10 · 3 April 2016]

The Christmas episode is one of the best they have done. It makes you appreciate how far we have come in welfare and the NHS. With a "virgin" birth, nativity play and showing the poverty that was still around at the time this episode is perfect. Sheila Reid's playing of a former workhouse inmate should bring a tear to the eye of anyone with a heart and she should have received an award for her acting. The sets are always impeccably dressed and the costumes and make up add to the overall time travel that this show achieves. This series always feels like a big hug, even when covering the darkest of issues and Sister Monica Joan always has words of wisdom escaping through the dementia. Vanessa Redgrave's voice-over's are perfect

So sad

[garryherring1963-378-642408 · 10/10 · 28 October 2019]

Not much moves me, but this episode did. It is so sad. The anguish and loneliness of Mrs Jenkins as she hoped for her children to come home. The brutality of the workhouse and being ripped apart from her children. Not knowing if they were alive or dead.

The end scene where she caresses Rosie's grave is so heart-breaking, and her line "She's tucked up, safe and warm"

This is the BBC at its best. Providing heart-pulling dramas.

The actress Sheila Reid should have had an award as the tragic Mrs Jenkins.

Better out than in?

[AndC63 · 5/10 · 17 November 2013]

What is it with Brits and toilet humour? Sister Philomena manages to get through to old Mrs Jenkins by breaking wind - not once but twice, and the second time in a different key! And then a short time later an abandoned baby also lets rip. I was half expecting one of our hard-working young midwives to join in with a fart or two of their own, but thankfully they managed to stifle the urge. Call me tight-bottomed, but these blasts seemed a little out of place in what was after all a Christmas special. Farting aside, after a very promising start I can't help but feel that the programme is becoming a little too mawkish and the women giving birth gratingly louder as each successive baby pops out into the world.