Crowning Glory

The most recent season of “Call the Midwife” began with bloody fingertips. Thirteen minutes into the opening episode, a woman in labor groaned in distress, and the nurse-midwife, Patsy, used a gloved hand to check her progress. As Patsy explained that her patient’s baby had “got himself into a bit of a pickle,” two of her fingers hovered in the lower left corner of the screen. They were stoplight red, an alarm set against the scene’s demure cream-and-yellow backdrop.