Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Extra specıal delivery!
Call The Midwife’s festive adventure tops the bill in the second of today’s TWO Christmas issues
Wintry scenes, newborn babies, tearjerking moments; they’ve become Christmas Day TV perennials since the first Call The Midwife festive special aired in 2012. The snow- covered sets, thawed by heartwarming storylines, have proved perfect Christmas fare for four years, but this year most of the action takes place amid the heat of Africa.
It’s Christmas 1961 and after enjoying a traditional lunch in Poplar, east London, the midwives and nuns of Nonnatus House receive an SOS call. The tiny Hope Clinic mission hospital in the Eastern Cape is understaffed, underfunded and lacking a proper water supply. Now Mother Felicity, the nun who ran the clinic with tough-asnails Dr Myra Fitzsimmonds, has died and the hospital needs help. So the Call The Midwife team prepares to make the sea voyage to South Africa to carry out a vaccination programme and help the local community, whose lives depend on the clinic’s existence.
In real life, Nonnatus House – the nunnery and midwives’ home first introduced to us through the memoirs of former midwife Jennifer Worth, on which the series is based – was called St Frideswide’s Mission House. It had historical links to Africa, as many of the nuns had worked in a mission hospital there for several years. When the Call The Midwife producers were looking to try something different for this year’s 90minute episode, the connection seemed perfect. ‘Because of that link, we thought, “Wouldn’t it be lovely to take our story to South Africa?”’ says producer Ann Tricklebank. ‘It was a superhuman task for Heidi Thomas, our writer, to finish the script and for us to get set up in time, but we did it.’
So here we are 6,000 miles away on a balmy day at the beginning of Cape Town’s mild winter, and the cast are in high spirits as they prepare to film scenes on the golden sands lapped by the Indian Ocean. The show sees a large group leaving for Africa, including midwives Trixie Franklin (played by Helen George), Barbara Gilbert (Charlotte Ritchie) and Phyllis Crane (Linda Bassett), nuns Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter) and Sister Winifred ( Victoria Yeates), and local GP Dr Turner and his wife Shelagh (Stephen McGann and Laura Main), who will initiate a polio vaccination scheme. Also along for the ride are Fred Buckle the handyman (Cliff Parisi) who’s there to fix the water supply and vicar Tom Hereward (Jack Ashton), who will report back to the church.
Charlotte Ritchie says the big news is that Barbara’s relationship with Tom, who was formerly engaged to Trixie, will develop yet further. ‘Trixie tells Tom he should try to be happy with Barbara,’ she says. ‘She’s been wonderful about their romance. I think the difficulty of what they experience in Africa cements Tom and Barbara as a couple. They seem well suited. And Tom still likes her even after she throws up on his trousers through seasickness! The experience propels them forward and it’ll be exciting to see what’s going to happen to them next.’
Ironically, it was while filming the festive special that Helen George started a real-life romance with Jack Ashton, who plays her former fiancé Tom, posting pictures of the pair of them on Instagram and tweeting that they go to football matches together at the weekend now they’re back home.
Romance aside, the team are set straight to work as soon as they arrive. They know they have it tough in London’s East End but that’s a holiday camp compared to Africa. There’s a huge queue of sick and needy people at the clinic and not enough staff to help them. Meanwhile the clean water supply is running out, and when the local farmers are unwilling to help, Fred and Tom are forced into desperate measures.
Sinead Cusack joins the cast as Dr Myra Fitzsimmonds. ‘ It was great to get Sinead, her attention to detail is amazing,’ says execut ive producer Pippa Har r is. ‘ She was cast with two weeks to spare but managed to get a visa, came out and slotted right in.’
At its heart the show has always been about mothers and babies. In Africa many of the expectant mothers have been malnourished since childhood, so their pelvic bones are often too small for them to deliver their babies naturally. In addition they must walk miles to get to the clinic. The midwives make friends with some of the mothers-to-be but, of course, not all their births will go to plan.
The show has never been afraid to tackle the burning issues of the day – past series have highlighted domestic violence, mental illness and the Thalidomide scandal – and in South Africa the shadow of apartheid is never far away. One scene sees local police barring the midwives from socialising with the black women they’ve been looking after.
The big difference for this Christmas special though is the weather. The snow machines used in previous years have been mothballed, and the most essential prop for the make-up team is the red greasepaint needed to create sunburn marks on Victoria Yeates and
‘Barbara and Tom’s love is cemented in South Africa’
Charlotte Ritchie. For today’s scenes Barbara’s in a matronly one-piece swimming cossie. ‘It’s not a good look for me!’ laughs Charlotte when the scenes are over. ‘Poor Barbara isn’t great with travel or heat. The journey doesn’t agree with her and she’s seasick, sweaty and sunburnt.
‘When I first heard about this trip I thought I’d be up a mountain with the wind in my hair, looking glamorous and wearing beige and a big hat. But no! Barbara’s seriously dishevelled.’
Not everyone suffered in the heat; Trixie tans quickly and today she’s wearing a stylish black two-piece bikini that the costume designer found on eBay. ‘It’s original 1960s vintage,’ Helen George says. ‘It’s been really special to get to know this country by working here. It’s my first time in South Africa and working with the local crew and getting inside tips on what to see has been a bonding experience for all of us as a cast.
‘When we film in London we make an effort to socialise, go to the theatre or meet up for dinner but we don’t just have a drink or relax together at the end of the day, so it’s lovely for us to be able to do that here.’
Jenny Agutter says she loved the opportunity to work with the locals. ‘Many of the extras are from the town- ships and one said to me, “When we do this scene, you can put your hand on my shoulder and then you can talk to me and then I’ll go.” I said, “That’s a good idea.” She was directing me!’
Wearing starchy nuns’ habits in the heat was tough for Jenny and Victoria. ‘We were out in the desert the other day with our wimples on, trapped on a broken-down bus.
It was difficult but we’re supposed to be hot and sweaty anyway,’ says Victoria. ‘I also get terrible sunburn in the show and the make-up is so realistic that when I saw myself in the mirror I thought I really was burnt.’
Laura Main, whose character She-
lagh looks chic in a widebrimmed hat and blue playsuit today, says the chance to film in Cape Town was a surprise. ‘I’d heard it was a potential story but I didn’t think Shelagh would be part of it. They somehow found a way to make it work.’ One of the most moving moments during the five-week shoot for Laura was filming at Redhill township where a polio clinic is set up in the drama. She was touched by the friend- liness of the locals, many of whom acted as extras, and found it sobering to be embraced by a community that has so little. ‘Filming there really affected me,’ she admits. ‘I felt grateful to be seeing something most people don’t get the chance to see.’
Previously her work as an ambassador for Prince Harry’s Sentebale charity has taken her to Lesotho, and Laura says Africa has got under her skin. ‘I came twice last year and I’m going back to Lesotho for a few days after filming finishes here,’ she says. ‘I’ve met Prince Harry and so much good has been done there.’
Filming in the township also made an impression on Helen. ‘I found it hard because you’re not exposed to this kind of thing every day. It’s frustrating that you can’t do anything to help.’ However, the production team has made a difference: the two rondavels
(round houses) they built for the show will be left for the local community to use, and other plans are afoot. ‘Ann, our producer, is pushing to get food banks for the township and raise money for books and clothes,’ adds Helen.
Filming in South Africa was a lifechanging experience for many of the team. The mission hospital set was in Mamre, an hour inland from Cape Town, and the awestruck cast all had their cameras out to capture the stunning sunsets there. Another location was Windmill Beach in the heart of the penguin breeding grounds outside Cape Town, and at one point the crew had to move their equipment to avoid disturbing the penguins.
Days off for the cast were spent at the beach, in the vineyards of Stellenbosch and visiting Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated. ‘There’s so much to do,’ says Jack Ashton. ‘I had a jet ski and I did some paragliding. I’m going shark-cage diving next – don’t tell production!’
While most of the Midwife crew are in South Africa, nurse Patsy Mount (Emerald Fennell) and Sister Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt) have been left in charge at Nonnatus House. In the new series the nuns and midwives will be joined by stern newcomer Sister Ursula ( Dame Harriet Walter), who’s not happy with the way Sister Julienne’s been running things.
The series, which will start in early 2017, will explore these new tensions in London in 1962. Says Heidi Thomas, ‘We’ll see all the contradictions and opportunities – the beacon of the Pill, the shadow of the Kray twins and the lure of independence.’
The BBC has commissioned three more series of the show, so it will continue into the mid-60s, and Charlotte is thrilled she’ll get to explore the era. ‘Linda Bassett says she remembers it so well,’ says Charlotte. ‘And Barbara grew up in Liverpool so she’d know all about the Beatles.
‘I’d love to see us continue into the 1970s – I wouldn’t mind having six months of Call The Midwife to work on every year. I love it!’
Safe to say she’s not the only one.
Call The Midwife Christmas special, Christmas Day, 8pm, BBC1.