“It is better to do something than nothing, even if the cost is great.”
Garth Nix
I really don’t think there’s a show more suited to Christmas Day than the unashamedly schmaltzy Call the Midwife. Even Doctor Who, which this year featured A Town Called Christmas (this sounds awesome until you actually watch the episode in question) doesn’t come close.
This year in 1950s London, the good old chaps of the army discover an Unexploded Bomb near Nunatus House and immediately evacuate the street. Various disgruntled families must spend Christmas at what looks like (but is probably not) a town hall, fed tea and iced buns by the nurses and nuns. Babies get born. People catch polio. Someone has a War Story. And yet everyone still manages to have a jolly good time.
Remarkable, really. In any other show all those things together would constitute the most depressing episode ever. Somehow, in Call the Midwife, you look away from the television actually feeling good about humanity.
Until you remember that you’re watching Call the Midwife on actual Christmas Day, that is.
The English Student 