YMMV / Call the Midwife

• Abandon Shipping: In the wake of hints in late series 3 that Patsy Mount was gay (or at least bisexual), the pairing Patsy/Trixie became quite popular due to the two's growing friendship. Shippers abandoned the pairing en masse come series 4, however, which featured the introduction of Patsy's established girlfriend Delia, who hadn't previously been seen or mentioned in the series. Heartwarmingly, Delia was immediately embraced by the fanbase, and Patsy/Delia is now quite likely the most popular couple in the fandom next to Turnadette.
• Adorkable:
  • Sister Bernadette has enormous glasses and goofy smiles.
  • Dr Turner, he of the questionable sartorial choices and inappropriate ties. Totally a dork and totally adorable.
• Awesome Music:
  • "O Come, O Come, Emanuel" from the 2012 Christmas special. The solo is sung by Laura Main (Sister Bernadette), a trained soprano, and by Sister Bernadette herself in-universe.
  • For "Children in Need" in 2013, Stephen McGann (Dr Turner) and Laura Main recorded a version of "When I Fall In Love (It Will Be Forever)". The BBC released it as a music video, and then the two performed it live. The reaction of the fandom was predictable, to say the least.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The existence of the nuns, who are not Catholic but Anglican. Though the Church of England is historically associated with King Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, today the Church has several religious orders.
• Crack Pairing: Out of the bowels of Tumblr sprang the Dr Turner/Sister Julienne pairing. Definite crack, especially given that Dr Turner is so desperately in love with Sister Bernadette he can hardly see straight (it's very mutual) and has been since they first shared a scene, and yet some find it strangely enthralling. The "logic" seems to be, "She is like an older Sister Bernadette, and he's in love with Sister Bernadette. Also, Jenny Agutter is hot."
• Creator Worship: Not only has Heidi Thomas won rave reviews from critics, she has been passionately embraced by the programme's fanbase, most especially on Tumblr, where she is considered to be just short of God. (And there are those who would dispute the "just short of" modifier.)
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Nancy Corrigan shows many of the textbook signs of ADHD, including distractibility, impulsivity, forgetfulness, and occasional hyperfocus, but was certainly never diagnosed (the condition didn't even get its current name until the 1980s).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The romantic subplot between Sister Bernadette and Dr Turner is an example of a storyline becoming an Ensemble Dark Horse; the pair's romance got, on average, five minutes an episode beginning with their first shared scene in 1x06, but has become tremendously beloved, not least because every second of that screentime went toward building an utterly believable relationship.
  • Unexpectedly, Jane Sutton (Dorothy Atkinson), the Shrinking Violet medical orderly who joins Nonnatus after Chummy goes to Africa. When she didn't appear in the 2013 Christmas special, much of the fandom started saying, "Where's Jane? We want Jane back!"^note Nine months later, fandom finally got their answer, courtesy of a cut line of dialogue that appeared in the New Zealand airing of the special: she's gone to nursing school.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Stephen McGann, who plays Dr Turner, has been fondly nicknamed by his fanbase "the Human Disaster" (for his questionable sartorial choices and general adorkableness). This nickname is as official as it gets; to the consternation of the whole fandom, it appeared in the Radio Times.
  • Similarly to the above, Laura Main has been nicknamed "the Pocket Soprano" because she is tiny and a soprano.
  • "DTE", or "Dr Turner Effect", refers to Stephen McGann — and his character, Dr Turner — making women everywhere swoon. Any photograph in which he looks particularly attractive will be labeled with "DTE".
  • Show Runner Heidi Thomas is often referred to affectionately as "The Queen" in the fandom on Tumblr.
• Fanservice Pack: For the entire non-nun cast in Season 6 as they change uniforms... some of them literally. Particularly for Helen George (Trixie) who had appeared on Strictly Come Dancing during filming; Trixie ends up with multiple scenes in tight clothing, in her undies or showing off her stockinged leg. In character, she's attending a Keep Fit class with the result that she's dropped two inches of her waist and gone up a cup size. The Daily Mail predictably described this as 'sexing up' the show.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • 2x03 becomes a little rough to watch knowing that Bryony Hannah (Cynthia Miller) is a mother herself.
  • Delia telling Patsy they'll have to "dance together in their heads" in 4x07 becomes this following the events of 4x08.
  • In 4X04, Tom tries to explain to a frustrated Trixie why he is devoted to his work as a man of God and is willing to be relocated by the Bishop with little notice. His anecdote about a grieving widower asking him to explain God's plan and why life was worth living following the death of his young wife is hard to watch after the events of 07X07.
  • Related to above, Barbara has the worst reaction out of all the staff to Sister Evangelina's death in 5X08. She dies herself less than two years later.
  • Old Jenny's closing narration in the 2017 Christmas Special that there's "always another Christmas" rings harsh on repeat viewings because Barbara won't live to see another.
• Les Yay: It took all of one scene for fans to start shipping Valerie Dyer and Lucille Anderson. Their closeness and warmth with each other — and particularly Valerie's ongoing protectiveness of and obvious care for Lucille — verges on romantic, including a notable shot of them Holding Hands after a particularly tragic case.
• More Popular Replacement: Barbara Gilbert, Jenny Lee's outward Suspiciously Similar Substitute, is actually much better liked among the fandom than Jenny ever was, thanks to her plucky, cheerful attitude, general adorkableness, and complete lack of Jenny's complicated love life and middle-class moralizing.
• Narm Charm: Call the Midwife definitely contains a few elements that could be considered a bit... Narm-y. There's that treacly voiceover for starters, not to mention the endless references to 'doing it for love'. Hallmark moments occur at least once an episode. Such a bucketload of sentimentality really ought to be off-putting and yet somehow it just... isn't. (And even if you're terribly cynical and think that it might be, CTM always has the ultimate trump card of loads and loads of brand new real life babies. Watch it and weep.)
• Portmanteau Couple Name: The pairing of Sister Bernadette and Dr Turner has officially been christened "Turnadette". Also, "Shulienne" seems to have been adopted for the Shelagh/Julienne mother-daughter relationship, if fanfiction.net is anything to go by.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: On Tumblr, there are a few fans who ship Nurse Barbara Gilbert with Trixie's former fiance, Rev. Tom Hereward, with the explanation that their personalities are better suited. Also, Barbara is a vicar's daughter, which might make her more understanding of the life of a curate than Trixie seemed to be. There have even been a few fanfictions featuring this ship. This shipping is despite the fact that in canon, Tom and Barbara have shared very few scenes together and have had no conversations of any substance. Until the 2015 Christmas special, during which the two shared some adorably flirty moments and Tom couldn't seem to take his eyes off Barbara whenever they were in the same room. By the 2017 special, they were married. Does the fandom know their head writer, or what?
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Especially in the 2020s, Sister Evangelina can come across as unacceptably stubborn and inflexible to the point of rudeness, especially with her Holier Than Thou "my way or the highway" attitude. To her credit, she does take some time to learn and reflect after this nearly does irreparable damage to one of her patients and her newborn baby.
• Viewers in Mourning: While Sister Evangelina's death was met with viewer waterworks, thanks to the fact that she passed away happy, back doing the job she loved, and at a rather advanced age, this was accepted as a normal plot development — especially because her actress had decided to retire from acting and everyone knew it. The death of Barbara Hereward née Gilbert, however, was met with frothing outrage on the part of the viewers, who were beyond devastated to lose her just after she had returned from a hiatus — in fact many fans are still livid about it, even half a decade later.
• Writer Cop Out: The 2015 Christmas Special builds and builds to what looks like a emotional and poignant death for Sister Monica Joan. Then right at the end...she just gets better. Out of nowhere. And everything goes back to the way it was. It's so unexpected that it honestly seems like the writers planned to kill her off but changed their minds right at the last moment. Perhaps because Sister Monica Joan is such a beloved character and staple of the series — or because Pam Ferris (Sister Evangelina) had by then decided to leave the show and retire from acting, resulting in Evangelina's death at the end of the subsequent series.

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