Series 6 is starting tonight on PBS. It’s now 1962, most of the staff’s back from South Africa, and already I can tell Sister Ursula’s being set up as a bit of a bitch (albeit a well meaning one). Then again Nurse Crane started out with a similar subplot. I wonder if Chummy will finally come back this season; at least for a single appearance.
I’ve already watched this series, and it’s kind of all over the place, with a bit less focus, and a bunch of regular characters only in a few episodes. They do have a family from last year returning fora follow-up storyline, though, which I don’t think they’ve ever done before.
No Chummy this season unfortunately - she couldn’t make her schedule work for filming. She hasn’t been written out, but I don’t think she was mentioned at all. Her husband, the policeman does appear a few times
Well I’m glad to see Sister Ursula leaving; even if her backstory explained a lot. Glad to see the maternity home got a reprieve, but obviously it’s going to close in the long run. Just like religious orders like Nonnatus House are practically extinct and the vast majority of Englishwomen migrate to having hospital births.
Well Nurse Dryer should be an interesting addition, but I was hoping we’d get to see them hire a non-white midwife. IIRC the NHS was hiring a lot of staff from Britain’s former colonies. A male nurse would be even more interesting (& something I hadn’t even considered) even he’d be limited to district nursing. Fred taking Sister Monica Joan along to the mental hospital was a little funny (I half expected the staff to get confused & think he was dropping her off), but at least we know where Mary Cynthia (even she’s exactly where we thought she’d be).
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IIRC the NHS was hiring a lot of staff from Britain’s former colonies. [/QUOTE.
Indeed, but “the order” would be making its own arrangements about advertising posts and deciding on applicants, even if it’s getting the bulk of the funding for their services from the NHS (which it might not necessarily be, services like theirs having been in and out of different organisational relationships over the decades - but all that side of it isn’t the main focus of the series, of course).
Perhaps there’s a plotline there for the next series: they’ve already set up the notion of a relationship with the place in South Africa.
I bought this on DVD and binge-watched it over the weekend.
I was glad to see Harriet Walter on the show, even in a bitchy role, but was surprised at how quickly she left and how little the supposed conflict came to. Sister Ursula orders new policy or procedure; nurses and nuns ignore it. Repeat until something goes wrong and she goes away.
I was also happy to see the butcher’s wife from Home Fires making an appearance as the mother of another thalidomide child–pleased especially because I was proud of myself for recognizing her as being the same actor even though she was all gussied up for the early '60s here instead of being WWII frumpy.
And the diaphragm thing was funny.
Yeah, Barbara was so nervous about being seen going into the family planning clinic it never occurred to her that anyone who recognized her would probably just think she needed to help the doctor with something!
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