Tag Archives: Call the Midwife

TV and Books for Anglophiles and Australiaphiles

Australiaphiles?  Okay, so we just invented it.  But we needed a way to include a delightful TV show into our listing here.

I’m interrupting my review of the Tucson Book Festival to tell you about my latest travel-inspiring TV addiction (and the books that go with the shows). I seem to be glued to Public Broadcasting most of the time.

DVD cover Doc Martin
Although Doc Martin is on a break and I don’t have to suffer the temptation of gorgeous Cornwall seaside every week, I find that I am watching more and more of the English countryside on other PBS shows.

DVD cover Call the Midwife

London’s East End is not exactly a tourist magnet, but I nevertheless feel drawn to London after watching the gritty reality of life there in the late 1950s as shown in Call the Midwife.  I missed season one, but after watching last year’s season two last year, I’m enjoying season three.  A group of midwives, young women who are learning about the world and themselves work with a a collection of nuns –variously efficient, whacked out and grumpy. You can catch up with entire missed episodes at PBS, or if you want to own it, check Amazon. Call the Midwife: Season 1

The series is based on actual journals of a midwife, and you can read the original in this packaged set of three books, The Complete Call the Midwife Stories: True Stories of the East End in the 1950s.  by Jennifer Worth.

DVD cover Mr. Selfridge

To see a more attractive part of London, go shopping at Selfridge’s, the grand department store that still lures customers, though perhaps with not quite as much drama as it did at the turn of the century (19th to 20th) when American Harry Gordon Selfridge first started the store.  The show, Mr. Selfridge,  is packed with dramatic stories, bouncing from shop girls to the hoi polloi of London society.  “Guest stars” like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appear from time to time to remind us what Londoners had on their mind at the time. Worth watching for the costumes and settings, but the delicious naughtiness of the characters will draw you back.

The unsung heroes of World War II include many who could not talk about their roles until very late in their lives.  Among those, none have a more interesting story to tell than those who worked as code breakers at Bletchley Hall. Learn more about the work at Bletchley in this book The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The WWII Codebreaking Centre and the Men and Women Who Worked There. Working on the earliest version of what would become a computer, mostly women, very bright women, figured out what the Germans were doing and helped the Allies win the war.

How do you follow that act? Most returned to humdrum lives. This fictional small group reunites to solve crimes.  The Bletchley Circle tells their story. The only failing of this show is the very very short “season”.  I couldn’t believe it was over after only three episodes in the first season! Anyhow, it is back and I’m loving it again. Set in post-war London, the attention to detail is as alluring as the intricate mind games involved in solving crimes.

The fourth show that I’m currently addicted to takes me back in time, not to London, but to 1920’s Melbourne Australia for the delightful Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. You may think you’ve seen all the types of female detectives possible, but I’ll bet you haven’t run into one like the sassy, sexy Phyrne (Fry-nee) Fisher.

A model of female independence, Miss Fisher is wealthy, unmarried, sleeps with a different man in just about every episode and carries on a flirtation with the uptight police detective she works with (and against). And she fearlessly pursues criminals with her tiny fashionable gun and her unmatchable wit.

This series is based on a book series, so if you can’t find the Australian-produced series in your area, you can always curl up with a good book–Introducing the Honorable Phryne Fisher: The First Three Phryrne Fisher Mysteries . However, I hope you can see the series, perhaps on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (or the other ABC as we call it in America), so you can drool over the costumes. I know that I harp on costumes a lot—but this show deserves the best costume award over any Oscar or Emmy winners. Even my husband notices the gorgeous rags that Miss Fisher sports.

Call the Midwife Recalls London’s East End

Wednesday Matinee

By Jane Boursaw

Destination: London, England

Call the Midwife

One of my favorite TV shows of the past few years is “Call the Midwife.” I happened upon it one night while surfing around the tube, and was immediately drawn into the story and characters. Continue reading Call the Midwife Recalls London’s East End