CALL THE MIDWIFE premieres tonight on PBS!

BBC's new serial about midwives in post WWII London premieres tonight. What with all the popular series on Sunday night....Homeland, Dexter, The Amazing Race, Damages, the new godawful 666 Park Ave.....will anyone be watching? I love that period in British history so I, for one, can't wait! Horrible title, tough...I'll admit that.

• Has the whole world gone baby crazy? This character works in the poorest part of Britain, but nobody is pregnant because they got raped. Teen girls are all gooey-eyed over their babies, even the prostitutes. Women aren't shown with 5 kids and a black eye, pregnant because the husband came home drunk and demanded sex even though she knows she'll get pregnant with another kid they can't afford. Everyone happily swaps prams and baby clothes and even slatterns who don't have the money for a pair of knickers for their kids who piss all over the slum want their babies, even if they are riddled with the clap. Nobody says, "Nurse, I can't have this baby. I exhausted, hungry, cold, battered, broke and my husband beats the kids. The last one has 3 birth defects and eats his feces. And the other kids' feces, too. Please help."

  Babies%21%20Duh%21%20They%27re%20so%20cute%21%20

• Congratulations R1! You just discovered that fictional TV shows do not always depict everybody's unique universe.

• ONE story in the fictional universe could waver from the Duh! Babies Are So Great! premise. Just one. Maybe one of the teenagers could say, "I don't really want the baby. I'm just not ready to be a mother, since I'm a prostitute or I was raped behind a tree at the church dance. I think it should be given up for adoption, since it's the 1950s and it would really be better for the kid."

• It's a strange premise.

• It's based on a Midwife's real-life experiences.

• I'm sure she never had an unhappy pregnant patient in the East End of London before birth control was widely available. Because everyone wants unlimited babies.

• horrible series

• I like the Chummy character.

• It's apparent that you haven't seen the entire series if you think that it's all happy babies and moms.

• Yeah, we know one mother dies and the chancre-mom loses the fetus. It's still all "we want that baby!" though. Never one where the baby gets wrapped in newspaper and dropped into the Thames or a 12 year old rape victim or a woman who doesn't want another baby.

• r1 and r3 have you even watched the series? It's not all happy babies. ***spoiler alert*** There is a young girl working as a prostitute who has a baby that is taken away from her. She ends up stealing someone else's baby. There is a white woman who gives birth to a black baby. There is a teenage girl who has her baby then leaves it on the steps of the midwives house. ***end of spoiler alert*** And there is a specific episode where Chummy has to deal with teaching the women about birth control.

• So you'd be happy if the series would depict some tormented teenage girl smothering her baby and hiding it in the clothes hamper? Or chopping it up and making meatloaf? Maybe we could have a 9 year old getting pregnant by her father and she and the baby both die during agonizing, bloody childbirth and the father drowns the girls mother in the river to cover up and the nuns dredge the river and pull up the days old drowned body and try to revive her? Or maybe Jimmy could go beserk and rape all the nuns and leave them all pregnant and runs away to Brazil? Maybe Chummy could be a secret soviet spy and poison all the babies she comes into contact with with lead so they'll grow up stupid?

• Filming on season 2 will begin on January 20. No word on when it will air in the UK, or when PBS will get it.

• Or nuns and midwives by day - vampire hunters by night. Or Nonastus House is undersiege by zombies caused by a virus brought to the docks by a ship from Haiti.

• Spoiler alert All of the babies are wanted. Even the prostitute mother wants her baby. The point is, there is never a scene where a mother asks the nurse how to miscarry. Or how to prevent further pregnancies. Or asks to put the baby up for adoption. Every time a baby appears, everyone is happy as a clam, even the white guy whose baby comes out black. He pretends he doesn't even know it's not his kid. And in real life, why wouldn't the wife simply tell the husband and midwives before the baby was born that that she was raped by a black man but was ashamed to go to the police because she didn't want to go to court? It was only a one night stand. Nobody knew she'd gotten drunk and banged a black guy once. I mean, how about a little bit of realism? She wouldn't keep quiet, pop out a black kid and go, "Well, there was this one time here in 1950s low class London that I got shitfaced and fucked a black guy. Waddaya gonna do. Ya know?" It's not a question of there being deaths. It's a question of every person in this piss-poor part of overcrowded London being thrilled with babies all the time. The virtual hounding of the red haired girl and her family into taking the baby home was bizarre. It was like, "You MUST take this child! Look how cute it is! Never mind its shocking that your child dumped it on our doorstep in an effort to keep the pregnancy hidden and now everybody will know it. IT'S HER CHILD, she needs it!" I'm so sick of babies being the new black. Celebrity baby bumps, celebrity children, celebrity children's books, baby names being trademarked, parents behaving as if having a child is the summa cum laude of life. Anti abortionists making everyone believe that every baby is a miracle that will have a magical life of happiness. Babies have been happening since the beginning of time. In 1950s slums, women were often trapped, raped, at the mercy of men, the courts, the medical system.... This show never touches on what it was like to be poor and have too many children, children with illnesses, birth defects, mental retardation or not enough money (because mom can't work.. She's always pregnant or nursing). It's telling that there were 100 births a month in one neighborhood pre-Pill and fewer than 20 a month after the Pill. That tells the real story of 1950s childbirth in the East End. It made women so miserable that they put a stop to 80% of it as soon as they were allowed. I'd like to see this show admit that not everyone wants a baby even though they're pregnant or even though theyve had the baby and it would make life ridiculously difficult to keep it. It's insanely saccharine on this point. Most prostitutes and unmarried teenaged girls were glad to give their babies away. Most women wanted to control their gestational destiny, especially in poverty-stricken areas in the 1950s.

• [quote] Or Nonastus House is undersiege by zombies caused by a virus brought to the docks by a ship from Haiti. Or someone is pregnant who doesn't want to be and she doesn't want to keep the baby, either. No -- that's too crazy! A woman asks a midwife how to prevent pregnancy because they have seven kids and her husband won't use rubbers. No -- too naughty. There are too many babies and not enough orphanages -- No -- too real. We already did two shows mentioning the workhouse. If we mention work houses, crowded conditions and lack of orphanages, people will think Britain had a population problem. Yay, babies! Everyone wants babies!

• r16 Were you unwanted as a child? (God knows, with your attitude you certainly are as an adult.) I watched the show when it first aired on the BBC last year and your description is almost completely contrary to what I saw. The entire series is about the connection between poverty and the lack of birth control. It makes a VERY strong case for socialized medicine and is fairly brutal about Britain's class system. And it presents the nascent birth of feminism in a remarkably adept way. Considering how pro-choice, pro-women and pro-socialism it is, I was actually surprised that it was even being shown in America. You make it sound like "With Six You Get Eggroll."

• I love Chummy, R8! Best part of the show is watching her bicycle while terrified pedestrians leap out of the way.

• I couldn't even watch half of it. I can't believe this crap is such a big hit in England.

• I cannot believe that people want this show to be about something it is not. Its not feel good but it is about respect and dignity. Nurse Jenny's growing respect for the people of East End. They are not shown as evil for being poor, or hatefuland misrable in their lives or men continually beating up on women as if that violence is cured by stopiing poverty. Rich white men never beat up on women of course!!!!!. It is based on the affectionate memories of someone who worked there in the fifties. Noticably as the series moves on and Jenny becomes more respectful the lives of the women are seen differntly through her eyes. Some of it is very heavy, particularly the incest episode but if its not realistic nd has rose covered classes, grim poverty and depression is no nearer the truth. And as for it being about women who want babies, speaking as someone who does not, it makes a very strong case that birth control (in any way) and empowering women is not about not wanting children but developing lives.