For the first time in the show’s run, Call the Midwife devotes an episode to discussing attitudes towards homosexuality, and the fact that it was considered a crime during the period in which the show is set.
The third episode of Season 4 is primarily about the struggle faced by Tony, a closeted gay man caught by the police in a honeytrap and arrested for an ‘indecent act’. His wife is expecting their first child, and the episode follows through in detail on how the judgement and discrimination that the community show towards Tony affects him and his family.
It’s somewhat shocking to see the characters we’ve come to know as the most caring members of their community so quick to define Tony’s actions as criminal and call him a sinner. That Patsy is the only one who cares is worth noting, as the usually kind Trixie bluntly wonders “why do you care so much?” and tells Patsy, “I just don’t think it’s our battle to fight.”
It’s surprising but true to the past that these perceptive figures really struggle to recognise Tony’s suffering.
His wife is in the same boat, telling him when he’s unsure about the court-mandated treatment that he’s given that she doesn’t want him to be the same anymore. Even when Call the Midwife allows the main characters to show compassion towards his plight, it shows how constricted they are by structures that have been established to destroy who Tony is. It’s a frank and real portrayal of the hopelessness somebody would feel in his situation, as everybody around him tells him that they don’t value him as a person because of his sexual orientation.
That inability to accept people extends to the secondary plotline, focused on the squalor that is prevalent throughout Poplar. We see a poor Irish woman and her husband unable to find appropriate housing while she’s expecting her third child. They’re housed somewhere crawling with cockroaches and disease, as dysentery spreads through the community.
Thankfully, Shelagh goes all “CSI Poplar” and gets to the bottom of the where the dysentery outbreak has spread from.
Metaphors tie the two plotlines together, as the terrible conditions in the area serve as a physical manifestation of the disgusting and intolerant attitudes that exist within the community. The episode also makes a slightly more uncomfortable equivalency between the rats spreading the disease and gay people, with Sister Monica Joan frantically trying to convince others that they shouldn’t simply kill the rats with poison and reminding everyone that they are “God’s creatures” too.
All in all, though, this is a strong episode that treats its story with sensitivity and complexity. Parts of it veer a little towards the predictable, but it is fascinating and concerning to see just how harsh and cruel the London of the past was.
The script here does a great job at approaching the issues in a nuanced way, and the excellent performance from Richard Fleeshman as Tony brings a real weight and significance to the episode.
Aired at 8pm on Sunday 1 February 2015 on BBC One.
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