7.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The second season offers more stories from the memoirs of a midwife and nurse who worked in the East End of London in the 1950s. Includes the 2012 Christmas Special.
Starring: Jessica Raine, Pam Ferris, Helen George, Laura Main, Judy ParfittPeriod | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 kbps)
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Spoiler alert: The following assumes that the reader is familiar with previous episodes of Call the Midwife. Readers new to the series should consult the review of Season One for a spoiler-free introduction. When the first season of Call the Midwife was shown in 2012, it generated higher ratings for the BBC than any new series since 2001. The response to the broadcasts on PBS was equally favorable. No doubt part of the reason was the sheer novelty of the stories, which is what prompted Jennifer Worth to write the memoirs on which the series was based. Though Midwife depicted events within living memory, it seemed like another world, given the pace of medical advances and the thorough integration of the National Health Service into British life. The critic for The Times called it one of the most radical dramas ever broadcast, because it demonstrated "how unbelievably terrifying, dreary and vile it was to be a working-class woman 60 years ago". Certainly that is one defining aspect of the series, but there's much more to it. As co-star Pam Ferris observes in the excellent documentary included with Season Two, Call the Midwife is a show about extremes. The love lavished on newborn babies contrasts sharply with the frequent cruelty of the circumstances surrounding their birth. The nuns and nurses ministering to the women of the impoverished Poplar neighborhood deal with blood, guts and trauma, then return to Nonnatus House for a life of spiritual devotion and idealistic service. In their off-hours, the midwives are young women who gossip, giggle and mist up at the cinema, but in their daily work they make life-and-death decisions and boss around men who, in other circumstances, they might be too shy even to address. (For the most part, the men behave as instructed.) From one moment to the next, you never know whether Midwife will deliver unexpected comedy or dire drama (and sometimes both at once).
Like Acorn Media, BBC Home Video appears to be embracing 1080p formatting for its digitally acquired series. Season One of Call the Midwife received 1080i treatment, but Season Two is presented at 1080p with AVC encoding. It's a good thing, too, because Season Two had eight episodes, plus the extended Christmas Special, as opposed to Season One's six episodes, and BBC has refused to spring for a third disc. Therefore, Season Two arrives with an additional 195 minutes (approximately) crammed onto its two BD-50s. As I have discussed elsewhere, 1080i produces unpredictable, and often unfortunate, results when subjected to the additional compression required to achieve such results. Fortunately, 1080p is more flexible, and there is no diminution in quality here. The image throughout Season Two is comparable to that presented on the Season One Blu-rays. The soft and slightly faded period look established by Chris Seager, and continued by several DPs who picked up where he left off, remains consistent throughout, with deep blacks that are especially valuable in some of the darker interiors of the East End or in the occasional nighttime excursion, like the intimidating trip to the Swedish ship at anchor that Trixie and Sister Evangelina make in a small rowboat. An occasional bright hue leaps off the screen for a startling effect, such as the yellow flowers that Jenny picks from the Nonnatus House garden to cheer up a patient, or the green sweater worn by a patient with a "big" personality (who gives Jenny pause for other reasons). The annual festival celebrated in Episode 5 is a particularly colorful occasion, which is then interrupted by a medical emergency. Detail is impressive throughout, allowing full appreciation of the production team's recreation of Fifties London in the East End, right down to the cobblestone streets (a challenge for bike riding, according to actress Jessica Raine). It also brings the viewer closer to the physical realities of birth than some may find comfortable (using a combination of prosthetics and live infants), although the camera angles and shot durations are chosen with care to remain tasteful and non-exploitative. Nevertheless, birth is not a neat affair, and a series about midwifery wouldn't be truthful if it didn't show the messy side of the work. The Blu-ray image reflects it in all its physical immediacy.
Probably in an effort to conserve space, BBC Home Video has dropped the lossless PCM stereo track included with Season One and switched to Dolby Digital. Now, I am not a lossless purist, but in this instance an unfortunate decision was made to limit the DD 2.0 track to the anemic DVD-standard bitrate of 192 kbps, which was a reasonable compromise for DVD's limited bandwidth and digital real estate but makes no sense on Blu-ray. The rate should have been at least 256 or, preferably, 448 kbps. Despite Dolby's claims, a bitrate of 192 kbps has never been fully "transparent" to the master recording, and the degradation in quality registers in small but telling ways on Season Two of Call the Midwife. First and most importantly, the dialogue is not always as clear as it was on the Season One Blu-rays. Heavy East End accents, speakers who overlap one another and ends of lines that are clipped by the speaker's exit are often difficult to make out. One can consult the subtitles, but I don't recall ever having to do so in Season One. I have a practiced ear for East End intonations and slang (which is used sparingly). The fact that I needed subtitles on multiple occasions with this set indicates either a change in the mix—doubtful, given the continuity of the creative team and the consistency of all the show's other elements—or a less accurate reproduction. Here's hoping that BBC Home Video reconsiders its approach to space saving and either increases the bitrate or else embraces a space-saving lossless format like DTS-HD Master Audio. The remainder of the track does not suffer so obviously from the change in sound encoding. Call the Midwife does not try to create an immersive surround field from its two channels. The essential sound effects are accurately reproduced, and Peter Salem's original score, including multiple variations on the series' memorable theme, plays with sufficient fidelity to accomplish its job. Even more than Season One, Season Two uses period-specific pop tunes to wonderful effect (for example, Dean Martin's cover of "Volare", which was released in 1958).
By the conclusion of Season Two, Call the Midwife had come to the end of Jennifer Worth's memoirs about her life as a midwife, but the public remains eager to hear more. Series creator Heidi Thomas has said that she received Worth's permission, before her death in 2011, to write episodes based on original stories, and there is probably no shortage of historically accurate material that has become available, because Worth's example has inspired her contemporaries to share their stories. Season Three, which will also be introduced by a Christmas Special, is to be set in 1959 and will deal with a sense of impending change. Indeed, Season Two itself concludes with a pleasing sense of closure. Where the series opened with an inexperienced Jenny Lee arriving for her first day at Nonnatus House on a bicycle, Season Two concludes with the fully qualified midwife and nurse riding away from it on a motorized bike—and she isn't alone. Highly recommended.
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(Still not reliable for this title)
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