Matthew's Financial Risks Threaten Nonnatus House in 'Call the Midwife'

If anyone was hoping that Call the Midwife would bring a spot of cheer to the weekend, we deeply empathize with your miscalculation. It was a very depressing hour in Poplar for Sunday's episode and we are going to have a storm cloud of dread over our heads for the upcoming week. Not only was it a grim week for the patients of the week, but we discovered that Nonnatus House was in grave danger.

Our first patient of the week, Gladys Bell (Anna Francolini), was in the middle of planning her father's funeral after taking care of him for years when she was diagnosed with abdominal cancer. It came from the asbestos her father unknowingly brought home from his construction job, and Gladys went so long without getting treated, preferring to focus on work and her family, that her prognosis was only a few months long. Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt) and Gladys' son Jason (Mitchell Creak) were able to convince her to join a clinical trial to extend her time, but it still looks like bad news for a woman who has fought her whole life.

Things weren't much better for Deidre (Grace Boyle), a struggling Irish mother who escaped an abusive marriage but could not get on her feet in London. She abandons her two sons at the church at the beginning of the episode but is later found collapsed at the dock, pregnant with a third child. Rosalind (Natalie Quarry) took on the case and helped Deidre gain some confidence. Cyril (Zephryn Taitte) also stepped in to help the young mother, but the best he could do was allow her to keep her newborn daughter while her two sons went into foster care. We have to applaud Deidre for how she took the news, though.