Our take
A wedding special, and a happy one, though the road to the altar is paved with a black eye, a broken shoulder and a wedding car that will not start. Around it is one of the show's busiest Christmas Days, with a run of births and a hard-hitting story about addiction that does not soften the facts. The final act, with its unexpected bridesmaids, is lovely. A strong one for fans of the later series.
What happens
It is December 1966 and, after a long engagement, Lucille and Cyril are to be married on Boxing Day. St Cuthbert's has referred twenty extra patients to Nonnatus, half of them due before Christmas, and Mother Mildred is coming to visit. Trixie meets Matthew Aylward fixing up his family's tenements and persuades him to come to the wedding. Lucille's sisters cannot come from Jamaica, and Phyllis still grieves for Barbara. After a hen party fuelled by rum punch, Lucille trips on the stairs and wakes with a swollen black eye three days before the wedding and calls it off, until Sister Monica Joan suggests leeches and Dr Turner applies one. Reggie becomes best man. On Christmas Day the midwives are called out one after another: Sister Frances delivers her first breech baby alone, and Anita Page's newborn turns out to be withdrawing from the heroin Anita has hidden from her husband Charlie, whose brother died of the drug. Mother Mildred, who has seen such babies in Hong Kong, tells the Turners that May was one of them; Shelagh nurses the baby, and Charlie stands by Anita. Lucille marries Cyril with a bridal party of children she delivered.
Can the kids watch it?
Rated 12 by the BBFC for drug references and moderate injury detail, so best for 12 and over.
Cast and crew
Starring
- Jenny Agutter as Sister Julienne
- Linda Bassett as Nurse Phyllis Crane
- Judy Parfitt as Sister Monica Joan
- Helen George as Nurse Trixie Franklin
- Leonie Elliott as Nurse Lucille Anderson
- Zephryn Taitte as Cyril Robinson
- Stephen McGann as Dr Patrick Turner
- Laura Main as Nurse Shelagh Turner
Guest stars
- Miriam Margolyes as Mother Mildred
- Vanessa Redgrave as Voice of Jennifer Worth
Writer
- Heidi Thomas
Director
- Syd Macartney