‘Call the Midwife’ season 6: Why the violent abuse scene was necessary — albeit horrifying
It’s been almost 24 hours now since the season 6 premiere of “Call the Midwife” aired on TV, and objectively, we thought it was a great start to the season. The writing was powerful and poignant, there was some change at Nonnatus House, and there was a surprisingly contemporary moment when Tom showed himself to be fine with Barbara buying her own engagement ring. Maybe his reaction was a tad unrealistic for some in the era, but you can’t make generalizations about every human being. There were men out there both then and now who would be fine with the move.
The point of this article is not so much talking about romance, or about the happier moments of the episode. Instead, the onus for this article is one one of the harshest moments that we saw as a viewer on the night: Trudy, the patient of the week, being choked and thrown about by her abusive husband. This is a moment that drew complaints both on social media and in a more official capacity in Great Britain, likely because it was such a dramatic, appalling thing to watch.
Yet, at the same time it was meant to be dramatic and appalling. This is a show that wants to cultivate a certain degree of authenticity, and the dark underbelly of abuse was present throughout the 1960’s both in the United Kingdom and everywhere else. If the show did not present you with a picture of this, horrifying as it may be, would you understand the gravity of the situation for Trudy to get out of the situation? Would the sense of urgency still be there? It would have felt as though the series was protecting us, and that is not something that creator / writer Heidi Thomas tends to do.
Passing along the proper advance warning is a problem that is difficult to conjure up the right solution for, given that there is no way to please everyone. You can put a warning at the start of the episode, but some viewers who tuned in late will miss it. There are no adverts with this show, so you can’t just throw one in there before the scene. The biggest thing you could do is put a scrolling message at the bottom of the screen warning that there is a moment of harsh violence coming up, but in doing this, you distract viewers from what was going on with the story.
Unless you want to neuter a show meant to depict a harsh reality (why would you want to do that?), our advice for many people out there who are upset about this moment is simple: You may want to find some other means for entertainment on Sunday nights. Maybe the show will not present domestic violence every episode, but there are other terrible things coming. This is a show about people helping young mothers out when they are at their lowest. If Trixie and Barbara were tasked with saving someone whose biggest problem was that they didn’t have enough gifts at their baby shower, we’d all throw a remote at the TV and be done with it.
Of course, there’s another argument we can make about there being far more important things to worry about in the world than a controversial scene from a TV show, but maybe not everyone else out there feels the same way in that regard.
Did you find the “Call the Midwife” premiere scene to go too far? Share below, and head over here to read our full review of Sunday’s premiere episode. (Photo: BBC.)