Beware of the Midwife (Fireside Pictures. Johnson Production Group, Lifetime, 2021)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2021 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night I watched another Lifetime “premiere,” a movie called Beware of the Midwife (a title which, at least for me, came too close to “Beware of the Blob!” to avoid risibility) which differed from previous Lifetime movies about the “perfect” teacher/nanny/wife/husband/stepfather/stepmother/guidance counselor/golf caddy/whatever who turns out to be a psycho bitch (regardless of her, his or its gender) getting the nice young leads in trouble only in that both the Midwife from Hell and the not-so-young couple she victimizes are Black. I suppose it’s an example of progress in race relations that now African-American actors have equal access to these clichés (though I remember saying that as long ago as 1996 about Will Smith’s role in Independence Day). Sarah McClain (Mouna Troaré) and her husband Kevin (Michael Xavier) are finally about to have their first child after years of trying (including vary ing their sexual positions in an attempt to make conception more likely, described oddly clinically in John F. Hayes’ script), only she’s beginning to have her doubts as to whether Western medicine in general and her obstetrician, Dr. Dervaux (Tanya Clarke – the character is listed as “Dr. Hughes” on the imdb.com page for the film but I’m pretty sure I heard something French-sounding beginning with “D”), in particular.

When there’s an accident at the St. Paul’s Hospital maternity ward and a woman loses her baby as a result, Sarah determines to seek the services of a midwife and finds one in Rose (Raven Dauda), who comes to the McClains’ home with an adult daughter, Anne (Bukola Walfall), who assists her. She also starts bossing the McClains around, giving them a strict regimen of diet and exercise and showing up at their house unannounced to make sure they’re sticking to it. Kevin is uncertain about entrusting the birth of his child – a daughter they’ve already named Mary – to someone outside the medical establishment, and he’s put off by Rose’s evasive answer when he asks her what will happen in case there’s an emergency. (I’ve learned enough about midwifery – from interviewing a midwife as well as a woman who used one – to know that a certified nurse-midwife is required to have a hospital contact so the medical establishment can take over in case the mother-to-be has an emergency that can’t be handled at home, so this is something that should have made the McClains more suspicious than they were.) Eventually Sarah has her child but suffers so severe a loss of blood that Kevin tries to get her to agree to be taken to the hospital – but eventually the baby comes out and Sarah seems to recover O.K.

Only if you think the McClains have seen the last of that pesky midwife, you’ve got another think coming. Rose shows up about a week after Mary’s birth and has a hissy-fit when she sees Sarah feeding him formula instead of breast milk, and at one point she steals a spare set of keys from a key rack helpfully labeled “KEYS” so she can let herself into the McClains’ home at any time. Writer Hayes has already dropped a big hint about her motive for her obsession with the McCiains’ baby – she’s chewed out her own daughter for not being able to get pregnant despite spending thousands of dollars on fertility treatments (though one wonders how Anne could get pregnant since we see no evidence that she’s either married or in a sexual relationship with a man), and it’s something of a twist on the usual Lifetime formula that this woman is obsessed with Mary because of her thwarted desire for a grandchild. The climax kicks off when Rose uses her keys to let herself into the McClain home at night and kidnap Mary, after first chloroforming Kevin and Sarah so she won’t wake them up and they won’t hear the baby crying. She plants her tube of chloroform in the McClains’ car so Kevin will be suspected of kidnapping his own daughter – and the cops totally buy it and hold Kevin for the crime until the good blonde white pediatrician who’s still maintained an interest in Sarah’s and the baby’s care does the sort of due diligence the McClains should have.

She doesn’t find Rose’s name in the registry of licensed midwives and she ultimately discovers video footage of her in the hospital trying to steal someone else’s baby – she was stopped by hospital security but they didn’t either detain her or report her to the police. Rose has decided to take herself and baby Mary to Tampa Bay, Florida and raise Mary as her own, and when Rose’s own daughter Anne tries to stop her Rose knocks out Anne with an injection and ties her up at home so she can’t stop her – though Anne was able to hide Rose’s bus tickets so when she arrives at the bus station she has to buy new ones, and that gives the McClains and the police time to catch up to her. Sarah and Rose have the typical big fight-to-the-finish after Rose pulls a gun on Sarah but Sarah is somehow able to knock it out of her hand, and eventually Sarah reaches for the gun and it’s not quite clear what happens after that, but apparently Rose dies (I had thought the writer might really twist the knife in and have an accidental shot go wild and kill baby Mary, but a tragic ending like that would definitely not be in the Lifetime formula), the McClains get back their baby and all is presumably right with their world.

Beware of the Midwife is an all too typical Lifetime movie, timidly going where hundreds of its predecessors have gone before, directed pretty much on autopilot by Max McGuire and decently if not spectacularly acted. One problem with the movie is that the actresses playing Rose and Sarah look so much alike – both stocky and with very dark skin even by African-American standards – it’s not easy to tell who is who in the climactic fight scene. It’s a typical Lifetime movie done with a Black cast – though at least the people in Beware of the Midwife live and work in a world that contains white people (unlike the ones in Lust, who seemed to be living in the same hermetically sealed all-Black world as the characters in the 1930’s “race movies”) and there’s a subtle hint that in deciding to give birth with a Black midwife instead of a white doctor Sarah is expressing a sort of racial pride.