If the run-up to Christmas and all its attendant admin has left you exhausted, count your blessings: at least you didn’t volunteer to organise an old-fashioned nativity tableau, complete with a squealing newborn baby and actual livestock. That’s exactly the task that the nuns and nurses of Nonnatus House sign themselves up for during this festive edition of BBC One’s Call the Midwife – as if their hands weren’t already full enough helping the expectant mothers of the East End.
Why are they so focused on fussing over custom-made mangers and whipping up costumes? Because the venerable Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt) has decreed that, as she is now well into her nineties, this Christmas will be her last on this earth. She’s not even that fussed about living to see the outcome of the space race. Dr Turner (Stephen McGann) is convinced that she is depressed; to lift her from the doldrums, her friends set to work recreating a series of Christmas memories from her Victorian girlhood.
