'Call the Midwife' Holiday Special 2017 Recap

Winter has definitely come to Poplar and this year’s Call the Midwife holiday special dramatizes an actual event in English weather history called the Big Freeze of 1962-63. The Thames froze over and for 62 consecutive days, snow lay on the ground across the south of the country.

For the midwives the season starts out with all the usual holiday preparations and plans. Nurse Dyer (Jennifer Kirby) is at Violet Buckle’s (Annabelle Apsion) shop getting fitted for her Jack and the Beanstalk pantomime costume. Fred (Cliff Parisi) arrives dressed as Father Christmas only to be thrown a change of wardrobe. He’ll be carrying on the great English tradition of pantomime dames by playing Jack’s mother, naturally.

Nurse Franklin (Helen George) has Christmas plans of an up-scale nature; she and her dentist beau, Christopher (Jack Hawkins) are taking a skiing vacation to Zurich. Ever the fashion plate, Trixie is more concerned with her apres-ski wardrobe than the her time on the slopes.

At the Nonnatus House Christmas party, Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter) surprises everyone with the return of their television set. (Yes, the one that had been “donated” to the Seaman’s Mission by Sister Ursula.) Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt) was most overjoyed!

The weather begins to turn on Boxing Day and by the next morning, Poplar residents wake to find two feet of snow on the ground and no delivery from the milkman.