ReCall the Midwife...

Babies drama set to keep growing

BY NICOLA METHVEN CALL the Midwife has secured a new BBC deal to keep it on screen until at least 2022.

The current three-year contract expires with the end of the ninth series of the UK’s biggest drama next year.

But last night the BBC announced the long-running Sunday night hit has been recommissioned for two further runs.

The show, set in the 1950s when it began seven years ago, has now reached 1964.

The new deal will take it up to 1967, the year the Abortion Act was passed to make it legal to end unwanted pregnancies in England, Scotland and Wales.

This series has had a heavy focus on the issue

Nurse Valerie Dyer with nurse Valerie Dyer, played by Jennifer Kirby, discovering her grandmother was a back-street abortionist. Other storylines have included disability, teenage pregnancy, mixedrace marriages and cot death. Series eight is the highest-rated returning drama of the year, with an average audience of nine million, and series nine starts filming in May. Executive producer Dame Pippa Harris said the show’s success was due to the “extraordinary creativity” of writer Heidi Thomas. She added: “We are delighted and humbled by the continued warmth of the audience response.” BBC content boss Charlotte Moore said she was looking forward to plots in the “tumultuous” late 1960s.