I discovered “Call the Midwife” in late 2020 when a mom in my neighborhood recommended it. We met the way I befriended most people during the summer of 2020 — from a distance — shouting across front yards or standing (at least) 6 feet apart on the street, with my newborn and 19-month-old parked in their stroller.
Her daughter was just a few months younger than mine, and, like me, my neighbor was doing the bulk of the child care while her spouse worked from home. This meant her days were also built around taking long walks in the morning before it got too hot, then passing time with snacks and puzzles and play until it was somehow, finally, nap time.
During that golden hour (or two), she told me she liked to rest on the couch and watch one episode of “Call the Midwife,” a show about the nurses and nuns of Nonnatus House in the 1950s and ’60s who work together delivering babies and caring for women in London’s impoverished East End.
“My husband doesn’t understand why I watch it because it always makes me cry, but I love it,” she said during one of our socially distanced conversations.
As a regular viewer of other British shows, like “Killing Eve” and “Downton Abbey,” I’d heard of “Call the Midwife,” but I wasn’t sure it was my type of TV; I didn’t like to think of myself as sentimental or a crier, so I didn’t immediately add it to my queue.
A few months later, I was scrolling Netflix on a dreary January night after the kids were in bed. I was both extremely isolated, because my family was still sheltering in place amid the winter COVID surge, and exhausted from nine months of taking care of two young children without any outside help. I was also still grieving for my mom, who died of cancer a year before COVID hit. Under these circumstances, I was looking for two things in a new show to binge: entertainment and comfort. I found both in “Call the Midwife.”
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