Call the Midwife, series 2 episode 2, review The second episode in the new series of Heidi Thomas's hit TV show Call the Midwife is a departure from the surprisingly gritty, dark and cold entry from last week, where an abusive husband prostituted his wife and a Swedish captain pimped out his daughter to his crew of sailors. Perhaps Thomas decided that there's a limit on how much suffering she could realistically inject into the plot lines - usually so harmless - as this episode was distinctly less shocking than its predecessor. Still, in its own rose-tinted, sentimental way, the programme has never shied away from some of the hard issues faced by midwives in poverty-stricken Fifties London. In this instalment, Vanessa Redgrave's wobbling, nostalgic-sounding voice-over told us "the greater gift than the trust of others is to trust oneself." She referred to a crisis of confidence experienced by midwife Cynthia Miller after she delivered a seemingly healthy baby, which died very soon after (in a genuinely touching scene). There was an inquest, difficult questions were asked, and for a while the entire community suspected her of causing the child's death. "I'll wait for the next nurse," one expectant mother said to Cynthia in the clinic, adding brutally under her breath "better to be safe than sorry." The fragile, polite and friendly little Cynthia, portrayed convincingly by Bryony Hannah, quickly unwound in the face of everyone's mistrust. But the speed with which it happened felt naive: she's a midwife, in the Fifties - a time when there was a far higher mortality rate for babies than today - surely Cynthia would have been made of sterner stuff? The absurdly nicknamed Chummy, played by comedian Miranda Hart, appeared very little in this episode, but her storyline took a big leap. She announced to her friends in the Nonnatus House nursing convent that she would be going to Africa to become a missionary - which prompted a couple of rather hilarious "taking up her missionary position" lines. But her departure doesn't bode well for the series: Hart's portrayal of the clumsy, awfully posh but very sweet Chummy is probably the best thing about it. Jenny's past caught up with her meanwhile, when little Jimmy (George Rainsford), whose heart she broke six months ago, turned up in Poplar again. He was back - now a man, not a boy - and about to begin building work on an East End prefab tower block. There was chemistry between the pair, but that was all dashed when it transpired that one of Jenny's patients was pregnant with Jimmy's child. Will Jenny ever get a man? At this rate, probably not. The episode rightly stuck to much more comfortable, familiar territory than last week's and there was the usual constant tug on the heart strings. Predictably everything turned out just fine - Cynthia wasn't to blame for the baby's death, Chummy was waved off into the African sunset by her beloved colleagues and the local cub scouts, and Jenny put on a fake smile and let Jimmy get on with his new life. It was unashamedly sentimental and faintly ridiculous, but by the end, I must admit that the midwives had managed to warm my heart.