WOMEN IN FRONT
ANZAC Girls. 2 discs. color. 363+ min. Ken Cameron & Ian Watson, Screentime Pty. Ltd. & Australian Broadcasting Corp., dist. by Acorn Media, 888-870-8047; www.acornonline.com. 2015. DVD ISBN 9781621722953. $49.99. SDH subtitles.
Call the Midwife: Season Four. 3 discs. color. 555+ min. Thaddeus O’Sullivan & others, Neal Street Prods. for BBC, www.bbcamerica.com. 2015. DVD UPC . $39.98; Blu-ray UPC 883929471065. $44.98. SDH subtitles.
The Crimson Field: Saving Lives on the Front Lines of WWI. 2 discs. color. 6+ hrs. David Evans & others, BBC, dist. by PBS, shoppbs.org. 2015. DVD UPC 841887024624. $34.99; Blu-ray UPC 841887024631. $39.99. SDH subtitles. F/TV
The creators of Call the Midwife have very successfully transitioned from the memoirs of midwife Jennifer Worth (the initial source for the series) to original scripts in this fourth season. This set takes place during the late 1950s and early 1960s and introduces two new (and very different) midwives, Barbara Gilbert (Charlotte Ritchie) and Phyllis Crane (Linda Bassett). As usual, there’s a lot happening in both the personal and professional lives of the nuns and nurses at Nonnatus House. The romance of midwife Trixie (Helen George) with the local curate (Jack Ashton) doesn’t go quite as planned, and her dependence on alcohol has become a problem. Then there’s handyman Fred Buckle (Cliff Parisi), whose future changes dramatically here. The social issues of East End London—poverty, syphilis, and child neglect, to name a few—are skillfully woven into the stories, along with all those beautiful babies! The consistent quality of this charming and sentimental series makes it must-viewing for drama fans.
A different kind of nursing experience is brought to the screen with ANZAC Girls, based on Peter Rees’s 2008 book The Other Anzacs: Nurses at War, 1914–1918, and the diaries and letters of actual Australian and New Zealand women who served during World War I. The six-part series focuses on five former ANZAC (Australian–New Zealand Army Corps) nurses assigned to establish a hospital at Lemnos (Greece) to care for those wounded at Gallipoli. Conditions are appalling, but the nurses perform stoically. As the war slogs on, the women are deployed to France and various stations on the western front. Romance provides relief from the never-ending challenges of nursing under such stressful conditions. After the war, the five unsung heroines went on to distinguish themselves in medicine and other fields. A terrific miniseries about women whose stories deserve to be told. There’s lots of bandages and blood, but as the Aussies might say, it’s a “bonzer” production. Sure to be popular in public libraries.
Battlefield nursing in World War I is also dramatized in the six-part series The Crimson Field. It’s 1915 in France near the front, and Lt. Col. Roland Brett (Kevin Doyle) leads a hierarchy of doctors, nurses, and support personnel trying to patch up those who have been wounded in body and spirit. Three young volunteer nurses arrive, barely prepared for what they will encounter, with each using her service as a way to escape her former life. One is Kitty Trevelyan (Oona Chaplin), unhappily separated from her young daughter because of her messy romantic past. The volunteers work under the supervision of strict but compassionate British Army matron Grace Carter (Hermione Norris), who has her own problems, and with civilian nurse Joan Livesey (Suranne Jones), who loves the wrong person. It is impossible not to care about these fully developed characters and their shattered patients. Verdict All three series are highly recommended for public library collections.
