Call The Midwife celebrates turning 10
Stars and creators of Call The Midwife are celebrating the 10th series of the hit show, which returns to TV next Sunday.
Writer Heidi Thomas said when she was first asked to write a script based on the memoirs of a 1950s midwife in the East End of London, she didn’t have high hopes.
Little did she know that it would become the most consistently popular drama of the past decade on BBC1 with regular ratings of more than eight million.
“I’d just done Cranford and I was looking for another period project,” she said. “But I didn’t consider a drama set in the 1950s as period – that seemed strange to someone born in 1962. I was worried it would be too twee. But by the time I got to page 17 I knew I had to do it.”
Scots actor Laura Main’s character Shelagh Turner has had quite the journey from quiet nun to midwife, doctor’s wife and mother of four. She said the romance between Shelagh – then known as Sister Bernadette – and Dr Turner came as a surprise.
“I signed up as a nun and ended up married,” she said. “But it was such a slow-burn romance that at the start of series two Steve McGann, who plays Dr Turner, and I had to be coached as to what was going on as they flirted while they cleaned their medical instruments.”