HEART OF THE MATTER
Heidi Thomas confirms her position at the forefront of TV drama, blending popular success with creative bravery in Call the Midwife
Somehow, the Call the Midwife Christmas special – a holiday tradition now for the past nine years – seems particularly significant this time around. ‘We’ve all been deprived of our sense of continuity lately,’ says Heidi Thomas, the creator and showrunner. ‘I feel that. People haven’t been able to celebrate their birthdays, they haven’t had their graduation ceremonies. For many, Christmas is a still point. It’s when you mull over what has happened in the past 12 months and count your blessings, or marvel at what you’ve survived, and if we can’t have our usual Christmas, that little magical, painful day of reckoning is not going to be there.’
But we will, at least, be able to gather round the table at Nonnatus House, the fictional Poplar convent that has been such a fixture of British – and international – television since the show was first broadcast in 2012. If you are not among the nine million people (that’s about one in every seven of us) who sit down to watch
Call the Midwife every week of its run, you’ll want to know that the drama, which is inspired by Jennifer Worth’s 2002 memoir, follows the lives of residents in the East End of London in the years following World War II. The first series is set in 1957; by the 10th, we are in 1966 (‘We do have England winning the World Cup,’ Thomas assures me).
Thomas was born in Liverpool – as was her husband of three decades, Stephen McGann, Call
the Midwife’s Dr Turner. Last year, both were awarded honorary doctorates by Liverpool University: ‘We got them at the same ceremony. I believe it was the first time that had happened to a husband and wife!’ She made her name in film and television with adaptations of classics such as I Capture the Castle,
Madame Bovary, Cranford and Little Women, while also writing dynamic contemporary dramas such as Soldier Soldier; her theatre credits have included a reimagining of Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea and a new version of the musical Gigi that opened on Broadway in 2015.
Call the Midwife began as a one-off project, but the BBC immediately commissioned a second series, which, explains Thomas, was when she began developing original narratives to expand the show beyond its source material. ‘I genuinely didn’t think that a decade later, we’d still be going,’ she says, modest about her own achievements. ‘You know, three series is considered to be a substantial success in television: if you get as far as five, it’s a massive hit.’
So it is an extraordinary triumph to have reached the 10th series.
The nuns of Nonnatus House work with local midwives to care for a diverse and growing population, and while the storylines might be inventions, the issues the show addresses are based on Thomas’ deep research into the time and place in which each series is set. Polio, alcoholism, abortion, the Thalidomide scandal, the despair of poverty, the brutality of racism – Call the Midwife deals openly with all these themes and more, with boldness, depth and compassion. It manages to be at once heartwarming and hard-hitting, featuring compelling stories of women’s real lives.
The drama also stands out for its portrayal of disability. Sally, a character with Down’s syndrome, had a significant role in the third series; now Reggie, who also has the condition, is a regular character, wonderfully played by Daniel Laurie. This is a subject closely connected to Thomas’ own life; her brother David, who died when he was 15, had Down’s. ‘Growing up with a disabled sibling is very interesting, because as an able-bodied person without any special needs, I had a real window into that world,’ she observes. ‘It gives you a very strong sense of who belongs and who is an outsider – that’s the first, superficial takeaway, and there’s an immediate dramatic interest in that. But I also believe that everybody alive is of value, and it is our obligation as human beings to find out where other people’s value is positioned.’
It is a sentiment that offers a good distillation of Call the Midwife’s enduring appeal, as well as feeling especially necessary in 2020. ‘I’ve never, ever wanted to give up on the show, because it gives me a platform and a place from which to tell really important stories, and I don’t think that opportunity will come my way again,’ says Thomas.
The Christmas special – which features Dr Who’s Peter Davison in a guest-starring role – nearly didn’t happen, due to the global pandemic. The new series, she tells me, has been filmed with the help of a two-metre pole to ensure safe social-distancing, camera tricks that make it look as if actors are closer than they really are, and Thomas’ sheer sense of determination. ‘We don’t consciously do it to empower others,’ she explains, ‘because we’re not pedagogical in that sense, but we are also constantly energised by the feedback that we get from others. Something that I didn’t foresee was that eight, nine, 10 years down the line, we’d still be doing episodes where you get a massive post bag the next day from people saying, “That is my story, that is my mother’s story”.’ Whatever the holiday season may be like this December, the show can play its role in that precious ‘still point’ of the year, with its powerful narratives of friendship, love and survival.
The ‘Call the Midwife’ Christmas special will be shown on BBC One in December.