Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Call the Midwife: Season Four Blu-ray Movie Review

Almost Fab

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 30, 2015

Spoiler alert: This review assumes that the reader is familiar with the first three seasons of Call the Midwife. Readers new to the series should consult the review of Season One for a spoiler-free introduction.

The unstoppable success of the BBC's adaptation of former midwife Jennifer Worth's memoirs not only outlasted the conclusion of Worth's stories; it was also undimmed by the departure of her character from the series. After playing the young Jenny for three eventful seasons, actress Jessica Raine wanted to pursue new opportunities (including the recently aired Wolf Hall and the new adaptation of Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime). Following in the footsteps of the real Jennifer Worth, her fictional equivalent embarked on a new career caring for the terminally ill, departing Nonnatus House amidst tears and fond farewells at the conclusion of Season Three. In the show, Jenny's decision concluded a dramatic arc that saw her deal with the sudden death of her boyfriend, Alec Jesmond (the result of an accident), after which she took on nursing duties in the final days of Lady Browne, the formidable mother of Jenny's colleague, Chummy Noakes (Miranda Hart).

Executive producers Heidi Thomas (who created Midwife) and Pippa Harris were unfazed by Raine's decision. They had plenty of stories to tell, a group of well-established and popular characters, a talented cast and a public eager for more. It was simply a matter of finding a new organizing principal for the episodes.

Throughout the fourth season of Call the Midwife, you can feel Thomas and her co-writers searching for a center to replace Jenny, who remains a presence now only in the retrospective narration of Vanessa Redgrave that opens and closes each episode. To the extent that the creative team manages to overcome the absence of their lead character, it is a tribute to the ability of different cast members to shift into the foreground and occupy the center temporarily. Still, the episodes in Season Four lack the cohesion of their predecessors, and there's a hint in the season's overall design that the showrunners are aware of the problem. By the season's end, it appears that Thomas and Harris have settled on a central character for the fifth season that the BBC has already ordered.

Like Seasons Two and Three, the fourth season of Call the Midwife was preceded by a Christmas special on December 25, 2014, which provided a bridge to the upcoming set of individual episodes. This was the first (and, so far, only) onscreen appearance of Vanessa Redgrave as the older Jenny Worth, now married and celebrating the holiday with her extended family in 2005. Jenny receives a holiday card from old friends that summons memories of events shortly after her departure from Nonnatus House. Among them is the decision by Nurse Cynthia Miller (Bryony Hannah) to enter the Anglican religious order as a postulant. (She returns mid-season, having taken her vows and a new name, "Sister Mary Cynthia".) In addition, Chummy and Nurse Patsy Mount (Emerald Fennell) find themselves taking charge of a harshly Dickensian home for unmarried pregnant women and their newborn babies that needs a thorough overhaul. At the beginning of Season Four, Chummy will depart Nonnatus House for a long-term posting at the facility, reappearing only in the final episode. (Presumably this plot contrivance was necessitated by actress Miranda Hart's other commitments, including her work in the recent Spy .)

But reinforcements appear as soon as Season Four begins. Nurse Barbara Gilbert (Charlotte Ritchie) arrives in Episode 1 with a fresh-faced innocence reminiscent of Jenny in Season One. Unfortunately for Barbara, her arrival—prompted by Nurse Miller's departure for the convent—becomes an occasion for Trixie (Helen George) and Patsy to break open the bar, leaving the poor newcomer badly hungover for her first day of work. The ever-impatient Sister Evangelina (Pam Ferris) is even more tart than usual, because she is trying to ignore severe abdominal pains that she fears may indicate serious illness. (Even among medical professionals, denial is all too common.) When her superior, Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter), finally forces Evangelina to seek diagnosis and treatment, she makes a full recovery but is temporarily sidelined. In the meantime, however, another new face arrives in the person of Nurse Phyllis Crane (Linda Bassett), an old hand as experienced and set in her ways as Nurse Gilbert is naive and impressionable. As formidable as she initially seems, Nurse Crane reveals unexpected facets before the season concludes.

Even as Season Four shows us the changing streets of Poplar through the eyes of its new arrivals, it also takes us deeper into the lives of characters we already know. Sister Julienne is confronted with a long-forgotten chapter from her past, when a mysterious benefactor offers Nonnatus House a sizeable endowment. Handyman Fred Buckle (Cliff Parisi), who lost his wife in the blitz, finds himself reevaluating his bachelor's existence when he encounters a widowed former acquaintance, Violet Gee (Annabelle Apsion), during his duties as head of the neighborhood watch. Shelagh Turner (Laura Main), formerly Sister Bernadette, finds herself missing the satisfaction of nursing and midwifery, even though her marriage to Dr. Patrick Turner (Stephen McGann) has brought her great joy. When a medical crisis requires every available pair of hands, Shelagh will don her uniform once again. Patsy Mount, about whom we have learned very little until now, will reveal a previously unseen private side through her friend Delia Busby (Kate Lamb), a surgical nurse at the London Hospital.



But it is platinum-haired Trixie Franklin, formerly the series' chief advocate of fun and frivolity, whose life in Season Four takes the most surprising turns. An encounter with a family of four neglected children revives her memories of her own miserable childhood with a broken-down, alcoholic father. Ironically, this occurs just as the handsome and gentle curate, Tom Hereward (Jack Ashton), who began dating Trixie in Season Three, becomes convinced that they are ideally suited. He proposes, and Trixie begins planning a gala wedding amidst congratulations all around. Privately, though, Trixie doubts whether she will ever be content as the wife of a clergyman. Her concerns reach a crescendo when Tom's bishop offers him a post in distant Newscastle. All the while, Trixie finds herself relying ever more heavily on the bottle for comfort, following in her father's footsteps and despising herself for weakness. By the end of Season Four, she is in crisis.

Despite these personal dramas, there is work to be done. A steady stream of expectant mothers continues to arrive at the clinic and require followup home visits. In Season Four, the midwives of Nonnatus House deal with pregnancies complicated by epidemics of diptheria and dysentery; by a pregnant woman with an advanced case of diabetes; and by a rare condition known as "hyperemesis gravidarum", or "HG", which is like morning sickness on steroids and endangers the life of both mother and child. (Doctor Turner cures the HG with a new miracle drug called thalidomide, which, if you look up its history, suggests that this particular case may come back to haunt him.) They assist a Bengali woman, who speaks no English and requires her young son as a translator, and a hearing-and-speech-impaired wife, who can only communicate through sign language interpreted by her husband. They aid several women in a group of Irish "travelers", vagabonds camped out near the edge of town, where the police, led by Chummy's husband, PC Noakes (Ben Caplan), are trying to run them off. And Sister Winifred (Victoria Yeates) embarks on a crusade to educate the prostitutes of Poplar in the practice of safe sex, after discovering rampant syphilis among their population. (The conversation in which the sincere young woman in a nun's habit forces Constable Noakes to organize a meeting between her and the hookers is a memorable moment.)

Thomas and Harris do not pull their punches. Indeed, they sometimes seem to go out of their way to lead certain characters down the darkest and most heartbreaking paths imaginable. But that has always been a key element in Call the Midwife: the contrast between the new lives being born, with all the future open before them, and the lives currently being lived, where bad things can happen to people for all sorts of reasons (or no reason at all).

Call the Midwife: Season Four Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Like Seasons Two and Three, Season Four of Call the Midwife has been encoded at 1080p on two BD-50s, using the AVC codec. Disc 1 contains episodes 1-4, plus the Christmas Special, while disc 2 contains episodes 5-8. Both the visual style and the video quality are consistent with those of previous seasons, except that the production design and costumes have now fully abandoned the Fifties period look that characterized the show at the outset. Women's fashions reflect the arrival of a new decade; hairstyles are more elaborate; and the environs of Poplar, while still impoverished, no longer suffer from the constant presence of post-war wreckage and debris. Everything is bolder and more colorful, and the hint of sepia that was almost a constant accompaniment of the image in Season One is now gone.

As is the usual practice with Call the Midwife, a rotating bench of cinematographers shot the episodes (with the Arri Alexa), but the visual style remains consistent. Detail continues to be impressive, blacks are solid, and noise or artifacts are almost wholly absent. If BBC Home Video would spread these episodes across three Blu-ray discs instead of two, my guess is that the image would be perfect.

Call the Midwife: Season Four Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Returning to lossless audio for the first time since Season One, BBC Home Video has encoded Season Four's stereo track as DTS-HD MA 2.0. The result is the best-sounding audio presentation since the first season, with clear dialogue, a detailed sense of the surrounding environments and a rich reproduction of both the original score by Peter Salem and Maurizio Malagnini and the specific soundtrack selections such as the poignant inclusion of Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely" and of Fred Astaire singing "Cheek to Cheek" that add vital emotional layering to Episode 7.

Call the Midwife: Season Four Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unlike the previous three seasons, Season Four includes no extras, even though interviews with cast and crew were shot and included by PBS with their U.S. broadcasts. At startup, each disc plays trailers that can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not available once the disc loads. Disc 1 plays trailers for Enchanted Kingdom and Earth Journeys. Disc 2 plays trailers for Queen and Country, Miss Marple and The Musketeers: Season 2.

Call the Midwife: Season Four Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

PBS trimmed less from the Season Four episodes than in some of the prior seasons of Call the Midwife, but these Blu-ray versions are still a few minutes longer than what appeared on American TV screens. Fans will want to get the full and uncut experience in the best possible presentation, and each episode packs so many separate stories into its hour-plus running time that it can easily stand up to multiple viewings. Despite a shaky start, the creative team has successfully weathered the challenge of continuing without their original lead character. Who knows what lies before them as the Swinging Sixties sweep through London? Highly recommended.