Bramwell

1995

Seasons & Episodes

  • 4
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
7.9| NA| en| More Info
Released: 01 May 1995 Ended
Producted By:
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
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The story of Eleanor Bramwell , a pioneering female doctor in the late nineteenth century, and the struggles she has with her friends, her colleagues and society. Determined to take the medical profession out of the dark ages, her strongly held opinions often draw her into conflict with the chief surgeon, a man keener on tradition than he is on progress.

Genre

Drama

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Bramwell Audience Reviews

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.
AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
screenidol The first three seasons, with all the flaws and occasional unnecessary emotional outbursts, make for a good series, one that develops reasonably well over the time period. I'll give it an 8. The end of the third season works as a good ending for the series, though admittedly, one wants to see a bit more. Especially how the warm but sometimes conflicting relationship between Drs. Bramwell and Marsham develops. Warning! If you've read the other reviews, you've heard this before: Do not watch season four! Heed this warning. The Bramwell-Marsham connection turns sour and bitter. The elder Bramwell, now married, is never seen again. Young Sidney, helper in the Thrift, is gone and the building itself is completely different. Nurse Carr becomes mean-spirited. And Eleanor goes off the deep end, abandoning the true nature of the Thrift to (unsuccessfully) take on the cause of child prostitution, longing to marry the military man who seems to represent everything she has been fighting against from the beginning; the relationship is totally unbelievable. Worst of all, the drivel this fourth series calls a story lasts for more than an hour and a half for each of the two painfully dark episodes in this abbreviated season. And the credits shown here on IMDb seem to indicate that the writer is the series creator and most prolific contributor, and the director(s) have done shows in other seasons. What happened?! The direction is abysmal, the photography horrendous, and the interludes of terrible music are completely incongruous and inappropriate. With every extreme closeup (I think at one time Eleanor's one eye and mouth filled the entire screen), with every strange angle of the camera, with every scene too dark to see yet creating no mood or ambiance, I kept asking, "What were they thinking? Who did this? Why???!" There is no good cheer or humor in the entire fourth season, yet there is nothing that involves us or informs us -- other than the overall message that life was tough then and woman and children were exploited, which was handled well enough in the first three seasons. Now, instead, we get religious overtones and a preachiness that could sour the devout. All in all, the fourth season was unrecognizable, from the storyline to the directing to the sets to the music. Even the acting was barely acceptable, and one has to wonder how the three leads who pushed on in a final season felt about their new characters. Since I give both episodes in season 4 a "1", I am forced to bring the show's rating down to "5"; best bet is to ignore the 4th season and take the first three, worth a healthy and hearty "8".
dbh850 *SPOILERS!!!!*Season 1-3: LOVE IT! Season 4: HATE IT!!What the heck happened?!?! They ruined this series. By the time I was into Season 4, I realized completely different people probably wrote it - or if they are the same people, they all got brain injuries. I don't know which and I'm too disgusted with the whole thing to look that up.As time went by, I became more and more disgusted with the protagonist, Eleanor Bramwell. She made some really stupid decisions and didn't learn from them. She lost her charm for me - I was more interested in her father and step mother by Season 4 than by her - and they disappeared completely. I don't understand why they wrote so much heartache caused by her. Poor Dr. Marsham! A completely decent fellow, honorable and smart and responsible and - well, I LIKED that relationship. Why kill it? They could have written ANYTHING happening. And all that unprotected sex and the big crisis is a pregnancy. REALLY?!?! She's a physician at a time when there were very few women doctors and ALL of their battles were uphill, she knows everything about how pregnancies occur, they had very primitive birth control, and she's UPSET that she got knocked up?!?! Oh man - that really ticked me off. She KNEW that a pregnancy would be a career-ending scandal. I spent 13 years in university and a few more in internships myself. There is NO WAY I would do something that stupid if it could destroy a couple of decades of schooling and training.On the medical side of things, it was remarkable to me that they showed so little in the way of the mortality rate from surgery at that time. It was a terrible, agonizing death. Opening up people's bodies and sticking your bare hands in there is NOT always helpful. It would have been realistic to have some of those sorts of things going on.But most of all, it's not a good idea to write a protagonist whom people like in the beginning and despise at the end. Reading some of these reviews - and looking at what people are saying on Netflix - I'm impressed with how much people dislike the way the show ended and dislike the protagonist. This series should be required viewing for film majors.
debleenab-79-975804 No, she did not go off the rails. There is a reason the title puns on the phrase 'loose women.' Anyone with even a glancing acquaintance of Victorian England and the condition of women at the time would understand the psychological pressure of disenfranchisement that Bramwell faces. The cinematic depiction of the last season mirrored the exact horror and psychic fragmentation a woman like Bramwell (who has achieved something on the strength of reason and ability in a man's world) experiences when she realizes that Woman in her time is still the victim of her sex, that she will continue to be victimized and penalized as such (through prostitution and moral judgment), and that even a woman of birth and money like herself can be brought low by the circumstance of her sex (in her case, by unwed pregnancy).She refers to 3 women who matter, who needs to be saved—herself/her unborn child, Dora and another one. They are paralleled by the three men in the last episode—the soldier, the doctor, and the pious man, who should be the representative members of society helping the unfortunates, and who all know of the horrors but are unmoved by them.In the scenes leading up to her confrontation with the benefactor-to-be, she lashes out at the indifference and unfeeling reactions of every one who punishes and scolds women who fall foul of the sexual line but who will not act to prevent and protect women and children, even after they know the dangers and the persons concerned. Bramwell is in effect railing against social utilitarianism where the happiness of the masses is arbitrated by a self-appointed few (the doctors, priests, legal and juridical institutions deciding for the very women their society uses and abuses).The Victorian notion of duty marks the series of confrontations, when Bramwell is told off for taking 25 pounds to 'buy' the child prostitute. She is castigated and judged for being delinquent in keeping hours and money, even though her motivations were far higher than anyone around her. When asked why she did not try to rescue the child through the police, or the Salvation Army, or other social institutions, she says she does not know, but we do—when the fine upstanding men around her know and do little or nothing, can she depend upon them to take matters seriously and do right? Bramwell, through her actions, is trying to get people to recognize their true social duty—to do whatever possible to prevent vice and protect the possibility of innocence. When the child is found dead, it is the death of her innocence too.The nuns at the convent where Bramwell seeks a possible anonymous confinement supposedly do good work but they want to teach her humility. They are not accustomed to seeing women asserting their will in a man's world. Even as the brides of Christ are chaste, so must ordinary eves be, and their God is interpreted in man's image, harsh and exacting. Is it any surprise that Bramwell says that in the absence of god, she is sure He will understand if she steps in and does what she can to protect one child, i.e., in the manifest absence of the compassion that is divine, ordinary ungodly people must do what they can, and if there is indeed a benevolent God, He won't mind the interference of people such as Bramwell. On this point, her actions –judged as impulsive, thoughtless, etc.—are in stark contrast to the measured mercy of the priest.The dialog with her colleague and former fiancé who says she has brought it upon herself is very Victorian, and indeed very American (to attribute absolute responsibility for such a crime to the woman alone). It is interesting to note that not one of the people close to her intercedes with Major Quarrie who has made her pregnant on her behalf, until she berates him in the street. And then they punish her for her condition by dismissing her, showing so little concern for the future welfare and earning capacity for the two. Then and now, shame overrides self-reliance.The point, I think is to show the horror that lay beneath the cover of Victorian society. The men used and abused it more, and were inured to it. Bramwell, being judged for being pregnant, feels empathetic about the plight of children, she feels for the powerless children because she is fighting to retain power as a woman in a man's world, and is failing, just as the child struggled to remain at the hospital when Bramwell insisted that she go. When the child dies, Bramwell feels a sense of urgent personal responsibility, and struggles to convey this to the men who are more 'objective' and detached. She had been an extraordinary woman in a man's world, now she was forced to be a more ordinary woman in a man's world. The last episode shows her as 'breaking up' also because it is a representation of her through society's eyes—a woman who erred, as a woman, when all this time she had tried to be a less emotional creature—a woman who has finally fallen and broken. Society could forgive a woman for being a doctor like she was, for that transgression, but it would not forgive what it saw a hubris and overreaching. Bramwell could not be allowed to be both woman and man (be sexual, sexually liberal and eager, as men were allowed to be, for example, Dr. Marsham, who was never castigated for frequenting brothels except by Bramwell and even then he saw no merit in her accusations; did he take revenge for her disclosure in the street by helping her get dismissed?), and bear a child. The nun's words were telling — she must be made to learn humility through being made 'no different' from the other unfortunate women who came to the convent for their confinement.
WilliamCKH turn of the century London....a thrift infirmary treating patients with the diseases and scourges of the day....graphic depictions of 19th century medical practices, including operations, amputations, etc... a beautiful lady doctor with a heart of gold and a stubborn streak...YES PLEASE....MAY I HAVE SOME MORE! I'd jump off a ladder if there was a chance I'd get treatment from Jemma Redgrave. I can look at her all day.I've got to stop watching shows like this. It only makes it harder in real life...finding real women to compare to the likes of Eleanor Bramwell