Call The Midwife Takes You Back To The Golden Years Of Gynecology

Show: Call The Midwife, which airs Sundays at 8 PM on PBS.

Plot: While her older self (Vanessa Redgrave) narrates, Jenny Lee (Jessica Raine) embarks upon a career as a midwife in London's rough East End, in the early days of the National Health Service.

Soapy Intrigue: Along with several other women (who haven't taken orders), Jenny works for a nursing convent, so there are sometimes clashes between the unmarried nurse-midwives and the nuns who direct their work. But so far, the soapiness has derived from the patients' stories: a Spanish woman who's had more than a dozen kids with her English husband, who doesn't speak her language (nor she his), for example; an older mother giving birth at one of her kid's weddings; and, in the latest episode, a woman whose cuckolding of her husband is revealed when she gives birth to a baby who's black, which...neither she nor her husband happens to be. This week's episode also found Jenny ministering to Joe (Roy Hudd), a Boer War veteran with hoarding tendencies, a rather unexpected crossover with my beloved Hoarders.

What It Will Remind You Of: Its fundamental sunniness and period setting make it a bit like Pan Am, a show I realize no one saw but me, never mind mourned.

What’s Best About It: The show's East End milieu is convincingly gritty, and its patients believably rough around the edges. And the admirably non-judgmental mission of all the midwives and nuns might make you slightly less cynical about the terrible state of the Catholic church in our own debased era.

What’s Worst About It: Patients' heavy cockney accents can sometimes be hard to understand.

But If I Save It Until Friday, Don’t I Risk Having Someone Spoil It For Me Before I Watch It? I think I literally know one other person who watches it, so no.

Finally, And Most Importantly, Do the Female Leads Wear Cute Outfits? Honestly, the sisters aren't turning it out the way one might hope. But when the nurse-midwives get an evening off and out of uniform, they sport classic '50s styles that are still viable today: full-skirted shirtdresses in charming prints; dainty jewellery; elegant cardigans.