This year Call the Midwife transports its Christmas special from the frost-glazed streets of Poplar to Hong Kong for its second ever two-part festive episode.
While this isn’t the first time that the period drama has uprooted its special from London to a place where the culture and practices are different, this is the first time that the show has woefully missed the mark when it comes to tone.
Heartbreakingly, the signs are easy to spot very early on in the first part of the special, when we learn that Fred (Cliff Parisi) and Violet (Annabelle Apsion) are off to visit her son, who is a police officer in Hong Kong.
PHOTOGRAPHER:Charmaine Man//BBC
While Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter) is boxing up medical supplies for Fred to send to their branch house in China, he questions her choice to write the address in English.
“Hong Kong is a British colony,” she tells him. “I’m quite sure everyone is competent in our mother tongue.”
Her comment is likely more for the audience than Fred: a way to prepare viewers who may be tempted to query the English-dominant communications between the Poplar lot and the locals during the Hong-Kong-set events.
Still, it lands wrong – dismissive with a slight hint of impatience, as if Fred’s question was silly. In this moment, a niggling bad feeling is planted, one that sprouts as the action truly begins.
PHOTOGRAPHER:Charmaine Man//BBC
That action kicks off when the Nonnatus nuns and nurses are called across the sea to aid their sister clinic after a huge landslide causes the building to collapse, leading to fatal injuries and displaced pregnant women, mothers and children.
Without a second thought Sister Julienne and co. dive into the thick of the chaos offering medical assistance and help in securing a new residence for the branch.
This is by no means an easy feat, when they cross paths with a violent local Triad gang who have certain rules about how things should be done.
Meanwhile, Shelagh (Laura Main) and Dr Patrick Turner (Stephen McGann), who have also joined the mission, learn some worrying news about their adoptive daughter’s birth mother, Esther Tang (Yennis Cheung). Esther has gotten herself mixed up with the Triad.
BBC
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Having borne two of its leader The Cormorant’s children (the youngest a newborn girl whom she regrettably abandons) Esther is forced into hiding, for fear that he will take their young son Christopher and raise him in the gang. The Turners throw themselves into danger in order to rescue Esther from her tragic set of circumstances.
The double-bill is filled with emotive drama as both catastrophes naturally result in punchy heartfelt moments but where Call the Midwife gets things very wrong is with the imbalance of power.
We frequently see the characters charging in, leading and guiding with an assumption that they are the authority on what is best. This happens when Sisters Julienne and Hilda (Fenella Woolgar) attempt to negotiate with the Triad about a property they’d purchased and the gun-wielding gang member endangers their lives and the innocents around them. Still they dig their heels before eventually admitting defeat.
Photographer://BBC
The same is true of the Turners, who think they can sneak Christopher over to the UK for life-changing surgery. That they do so without properly considering the practicalities or the backlash Esther might be left to face only denotes their ignorance.
When that doesn’t work, Patrick, along with Fred, is kidnapped and taken to The Cormorant. He then bargains with Triad leader, promising to return Christopher once he is well enough – a promise he has no authority to make.
Call the Midwife’s creative team has, on more than one occasion, proven that they are skilled when it comes to navigating the complexities of cultural nuances.
When the Nonnatus crew traveled to South Africa for their 2016 Christmas special the team were quickly humbled by the excruciating hot weather (with Trixie’s make up sliding down her face) as well as the local doctor and the patients, who reminded them that their ways were different.
BBC
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The Poplar team were reshaped by their experience and as much as they imparted knowledge, they left with new learnings too.
The same was true of the 2019 Christmas special. It only took the gang to the Scottish Outer Hebrides, but moved them so much further along in terms of their cultural education. Something as simple as the presence of a Christmas tree (aka the “pagan monstrosity”) causing upset was an enriching moment that opened up new understandings about being mindful of imposing customs.
It then becomes even more baffling that the same approach has not been adopted with this year’s Christmas special.
While the Poplar gang’s intent is honourable and their efforts do eventually yield positive results, this lack of cultural exchange is what leads to the Nonnatus crew feeling like ‘white saviours’.
PHOTOGRAPHER:Charmaine Man//BBC
The character Mrs Ma (Patra Au) feels as though she is there to mitigate this by serving as the local guiding voice, but her concerns aren’t louder or more effective than the will of the Nonnatus team to do good, and so her voice and perspective is dulled.
Equally, Mrs Ma’s presence does nothing to counterbalance Esther’s storyline. Esther being brought back to the show to experience more suffering, only to be saved by the Turners and indebted to them once again is not only unnecessarily harsh but also compounds the imbalance of power.
Additionally the audience is constantly reminded of the locals’ suffering and their hardship without the balance of joy or the opportunity to see them as more than just victims.
PHOTOGRAPHER:Olly Courtney//BBC
That said, there are some wins across the episode. Phyllis’ (Linda Bassett) connection with the young pregnant mother Yue Chan (Ocean On) feels earnest and tender. And, away from Hong Kong, another heartwarming connection tugs on the heartstrings when Sister Monica Jones (Judy Parfitt) offers companionship and care to an elderly dying man in his last days.
With this Call the Midwife is brilliantly consistent in showing that age does not diminish value as Sister Monica Jones’ skill and wisdom guide the team left back at Poplar.
We only wish there were more wins for the team abroad.
Call the Midwife airs on BBC One and streams on BBC iPlayer.
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TV writer, Digital Spy Janet completed her Masters degree in Magazine Journalism in 2013 and has continued to grow professionally within the industry ever since. For six years she honed her analytical reviewing skills at the Good Housekeeping institute eventually becoming Acting Head of Food testing. She also freelanced in the field of film and TV journalism from 2013-2020, when she interviewed A-List stars such as Samuel L Jackson, Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. In 2021 she joined Digital Spy as TV writer where she gets to delve into more of what she loves, watching copious amounts of telly all in the name of work. Since taking on the role she has conducted red carpet interviews with the cast of Bridgerton, covered the BAFTAs and been interviewed by BBC Radio and London Live. In her spare time she also moonlights as a published author, the book Gothic Angel.