When Call the Midwife first aired in 2012, it was often dismissed as “nostalgia TV”. I was incensed. We covered unmedicated childbirth, poverty, abortion and domestic violence – nostalgia was not in our remit. Besides, the debut series was set in 1957, before I was born. How could I write with wistful longing for an era I had never witnessed? I also thought nostalgia was quite naff.
I’ve changed my mind since then. Because of our annual Christmas special, each series we make spans a calendar year. On screen, it’s now 1971 – by this point, in real life, I was nine years old, and nostalgia has engulfed me.
Dr Turner, the show’s GP, has two young daughters, and I quiver at every glimpse of their quilted dressing gowns, their backyard tortoise, their Blue Peter obsession, their meals of mince and Angel Delight. There can be no proper depiction of a 70s childhood without Angel Delight. My scripts would have dished it up in every flavour then available (namely strawberries and cream, raspberry, chocolate and butterscotch) if BBC policy hadn’t reined me in.
For me, every episode now carries echoes of things past – in every mention of The Galloping Gourmet, every grumble about going decimal. I relish that tights are tan, tellies are black and white, Advent calendars contain no chocolate and the Christmas decorations are all a bit subdued. Because in Call the Midwife, as in life, everything circles back to Christmas in the end.
Aged seven, I burst into tears when my dad brought our beloved silver tree down from the loft. I had grown, and it was suddenly smaller than I was and looked shabby. I can still recall the misery of that moment. An expected thrill had not been delivered. Magic had failed to repeat itself. And I had learned an eternal truth: Christmas is not a constant. It’s not even a tangible event. It’s a feeling we chase, year after year, through thickets of memory and the tangled forest that is the present day. But when we catch it – even for a moment – we are back in a place when joy was all there was. The pursuit is compulsive.
Related articles:
I need to close my eyes, and smell cigar smoke, or chew on a Toffee Penny, or hear the theme tune from Morecambe & Wise. And then it’s Christmas once more in our crowded house in Liverpool, and the lid is off the Quality Street. My dad has lit up his annual Montecristo, and everyone is laughing. A drunk uncle arrives, bringing my brother and me the gift of an entirely unsolicited puppy and, compounding the felony, he has dressed it as a clown. We are entranced, our mother is enraged, and she throws her Cinzano Bianco at him. She shouts that it’s going straight to the pound on Boxing Day. Fifteen years later, it’s Christmas again and the pup’s still there, wearing a tinsel collar and eating After Eight mints. But our father is dead, and there’s no smell of cigars.
The word nostalgia, rooted in ancient Greek, means “the pain of returning home”, and at Christmas (to mash up Morrissey and Crosby) we all go back to the old house, if only in our dreams. We see what has changed, we meet what is lost, and in that moment it is found again.
He is not there; she has left us. The children have grown, or grown up, or they have simply gone. But the dusted-down baubles and the customary sweets all act as salve to the wounds of life as it evolves. And so does festive telly.
Dedicated fans write in to share their viewing rites, in which a great deal of Baileys seems to feature
After being on TV every Christmas Day for 13 years, the Call the Midwife specials have become part of the pattern. Dedicated fans write in to share their viewing rites, in which a great deal of Baileys seems to feature. Some rewatch all the other specials first, just to get them in the mood. But even then, according to my postbag, it is not the same if there is a) no snow b) no Fred as Santa c) no Christmas dinner at Nonnatus House. I curate every episode with endless love and just a touch of asperity, much as I serve no fewer than six different toppings with our family Christmas pudding. This is humanity’s most fragile, precious time of year, and I live in dread of people being disappointed.
For now, I’ll keep on trying to conjure up the magic, sending midwives in red cardies out on their bikes, in blizzards. Because one day this show will be a memory, and I am no longer dismissive of nostalgia. I have eaten humble pie, and it tastes like a Toffee Penny. Or possibly, Angel Delight.
Heidi Thomas is the creator of Call the Midwife; the Christmas special will be broadcast on 25 December on BBC One at 8:15pm
Photograph by Nicky Johnston/BBC, Neal Street Productions