Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Midwife always delivers
Love, loss, abandonment – this year’s festive Call The Midwife will bring a lump to your throat
Call The Midwife’s potent mix of joy, heartbreak and bonny babies has made it one of the most popular dramas on TV and a perennial festive favourite. Cosy 1950s and 60s nostalgia is twinned with gritty reality, guaranteeing tears for viewers every Christmas without fail.
This year’s feature-length episode is no different. Yes, we have Santa and chubby toddlers, but there are also stories of neglect and loss. Creator Heidi Thomas has covered many topics across the eight years she’s been writing the show, which is based on the memoirs of real East End midwife Jennifer Worth. But a question at the back of her mind about what happens to unwanted babies has formed one of the themes of this year’s special.
‘Adoption has always featured in the show,’ Heidi says. ‘Girls giving up their babies if they weren’t married was part of the culture then. In series four we featured a boy and his sisters who were neglected by their mother, and we ended with them being rescued and sent on the Australia child migrant programme.
‘In recent years, however, that has been exposed as something that was a dreadful experience for many of the children involved. They were often used simply for farm labour. I wondered what it was like for someone who had been out there and survived it.’
She created a character called Lena, who’s pregnant. She’s helped by the midwives, but has been scarred by the way she was treated as a child migrant. In stark contrast, a contingent of babies from Hong Kong ends up at Nonnatus House, where the nuns and midwives live, all earmarked for loving homes under a scheme that is partly run by the church.
The arrival of the Chinese babies brings with it another new character, Sister Mildred, played by Miriam Margolyes. She made quite an impression on her new cast mates, by eating onions for breakfast, belching, swearing and, well, just being Miriam. ‘She says outrageous things and likes the idea of slightly pushing people,’ says Jenny Agutter, who plays Sister Julienne, the Sister-inCharge at Nonnatus House. ‘She’d gone on the record saying she wanted to be in the show but she told us, “Yes, I really wanted to be in it but I never thought they’d cast me as a nun.”’
Heidi reveals that she actually wrote the part for Miriam. ‘She’s confident, bolshy and has sheer physical presence. To our delight, she’s agreed to make more guest appearances and we’ll meet the character again in the next series.’
The Christmas special also sees Sister Julienne wrestling with a dilemma. She’s favourite to take over from the Mother Superior at the Mother House, but doesn’t want to leave Nonnatus House. ‘The idea came from a conversation with Sister Margaret-Angela, one of our advisors,’ says Heidi. ‘She said the hardest thing about religious life was obedience. The idea that you have to submit to a career move you don’t want is extraordinary.’ Hankies at the ready!
Call The Midwife, Christmas Day, 7.45pm, BBC1.