About the only American-made TV shows Nancy and I watch
these days are the ones that aren’t dependent on good writing or compelling
stories. Every once in a while we try to test the waters, but we’ve learned
that the search for good, solid American made drama is like careening through
a field full of Don Quixote’s windmills. As Newton Minnow put it over fifty
years ago, television is “a vast wasteland.”
Thankfully, I’m not at the point of despair. The British
have rescued me.
About four years ago, Nancy kept prodding me to watch a
P.B.S. series called Lark Rise to Candleford. I resisted. I grew up immersed in
muscular westerns like Shane and High Noon and it seemed to me that a British
drama would move too slowly for me. But, once I started watching I was hooked.
The episodes, based on Flora Thompson’s trilogy about life in two adjacent
British villages during the Victorian/Edwardian eras, focused on human
interaction, family, faith, and love. The dialogue was simple, yet also
profound. There was no violence. The American obsession with sex was
refreshingly absent.
It was the beginning of what has become a very satisfying
journey. After the last episode of Lark Rise to Candleford aired a couple of
years ago, I graduated to Downton Abbey. I was about to despair when Downton
Abbey’s season ended. But, the British rescued me again; with a series titled
Call the Midwife.
As it was with Lark Rise to Candleford, Call the Midwife has
wrapped love, beauty, simplicity, grace, and the pains of everyday life¸ into
exquisitely crafted packages that have not only engaged my mind, but also my
gut.
The series is based on British author Jennifer Worth’s
trilogy about her experiences during the 1950’s as a midwife at Nonnatus House,
a convent/care center situated on London’s east end. The cast is ensemble,
which means that the audience can focus on the story. While I’ve grown to
admire each of the characters, my favorite has become Sister Monica Joan. She’s
the oldest of the nuns at Nonnatus House. At times she’s scatter-brained, but
there are times when she’s the focal point of wisdom for the midwives and her
fellow nuns. She’s suffering from dementia, but somehow manages occasional
bursts of creativity. One minute you’ll hear her muttering incoherently. Then,
at the perfect moment, wisdom comes flowing out in torrents. In a recent
episode, one of the midwives asks her if she took up the nun’s life because she
loved the work. “Of course not,” she snapped.
“Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love
aching weariness, and carry on working, in spite of it? One cannot love these
things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people.”
Each episode revolves around the miracles of birth and
the crises that often come with them. As with the cast, I’ve loved all the
stories, but there’s one in particular that reached deeper into my gut than I
thought was possible. It’s the story of an expectant mother and her fisherman
husband. She’s already lost one child and the fear of losing another weighs on
her like a funeral shroud. The child is born and all seems to be well. But the
mother develops a postpartum psychosis, believing that the only way for her to
protect the child is to commit suicide and take the child with her. After a
harrowing rescue, the young mother is institutionalized. The doctors decide
that the only cure for her is shock treatment. As the scene depicting the
treatments began to unfold I wanted to turn away, but couldn’t. I began to sob
uncontrollably, thinking about the ordeal my mother went through after my
father died. The weight of being the sole care-giver for three children,
compounded by the fact that she was barely literate, was too much for her. She
had a complete nervous breakdown. For almost two years the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts tinkered with her. The shock treatments took an enormous toll. On
the day she was discharged from the hospital she weighed less than 80 pounds.
For the rest of her life, she fought with every ounce of
strength she could muster to keep her family together
I’ve occasionally asked myself how or why my mother could
endure such pain.
In the episode’s final moments the young mother is seen
at home with her child and husband. The long road to reconciliation has begun.
A voice-over concludes, “It’s love that gives us the strength to endure the
pains that life often dishes out.”
Love truly is the only answer that makes sense.
Newton Minnow was right. When television is bad, it’s a
vast wasteland. But, when it’s really good it gets into your gut and teaches
you what it means to be fully human.
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