- Radio Times
- Review by:
- Alison Graham
Call the Midwife has always been the most subversively feminist mainstream drama on television, but tonight it fully embraces the sisterhood with an angry episode about the horrors of illegal abortion, rounded off with a paean to the Pill.
Sharon Small plays Nora Harding, an exhausted mother of eight with a jobless husband and another baby on the way. Distraught with poverty and misery in the family’s two-roomed hovel, she decides she must rid herself of the baby. Watch out, it’s tough stuff, particularly for an 8pm Sunday-night drama.
The mood lightens a little as the gang at Nonnatus House is persuaded by the vicar’s very pushy wife to hold a baby show during the annual fête. But, again, it’s little, lovelorn, desperately troubled Sister Bernadette (Laura Main) who will grab your heart.
About this programme
5/8. The locals excitedly prepare for the summer fete, featuring a baby show for which Trixie volunteers to secure a celebrity judge. Not everyone is in the mood for a party, however, as Jenny finds when she meets Nora Harding, a mother-of-eight distraught that she will soon have another mouth to feed. The midwife does her best to reassure the desperate mum, but her words fall on deaf ears and Nora ends up taking matters into her own hands. Jessica Raine and Helen George star, with a guest appearance by Sharon Small (Mistresses).
Cast and crew
Cast
- Jenny Lee
- Jessica Raine
- Sister Julienne
- Jenny Agutter
- Sister Evangelina
- Pam Ferris
- Sister Monica Joan
- Judy Parfitt
- Trixie Franklin
- Helen George
- Cynthia Miller
- Bryony Hannah
- Sister Bernadette
- Laura Main
- Dr Turner
- Stephen McGann
- Fred
- Cliff Parisi
- Jane Sutton
- Dorothy Atkinson
- Timothy Turner
- Max Macmillan
- Nora Harding
- Sharon Small
- Bill Harding
- Mark Flitton
- Jack Smith
- Jake Bailey
- Mrs Clarke
- Lucy Russell
- Mrs Pritchard
- Alison Newman
- Miriam Pritchard
- Charlotte Victoria
- Clifford Raines
- Tristan Gemmill
- Voice of mature Jenny
- Vanessa Redgrave
Crew
- Director
- China Moo-Young
- Producer
- Hugh Warren
- Writer
- Heidi Thomas
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