Posted in: BBC, TV | Tagged: bbc, Call the Midwife

'Call the Midwife' Starts Filming Ninth Season for BBC

Published Wed, 22 May 2019 15:05:24 -0500

It's that time of year, when all of the shows I cover in the United States go on hiatus for a year. This is when my search for programs to cover from other countries starts, so I'm really happy to announce that Call the Midwife crew has started production on their ninth season.

'Call the Midwife' Starts Filming Ninth Season for BBC — //Credit: BBC

Created and written by Heidi Thomas, the upcoming series of Call The Midwife follows a triumphant eighth series which averaged nine million viewers per episode. The series explored many areas of medical and social history, including the impact of disability, adoption, abortion, cot death, Intersex representation, cervical smear tests and Sickle cell disease (which prompted a 46% increase of new blood donors registering). This ninth series will uphold the show's established reputation of compelling, sensitive and relevant storylines, with a tenth and eleventh series already commissioned, keeping the show on air until 2022.

-BBC

We were joking around earlier about Call the Midwife, but it really is an excellent show, and each episode tends to draw in an average of nine million viewers each episode. Those are the kind of numbers a lot of shows stateside would do just about anything for.

By comparison, the first ever episode of The Walking Dead pulled in 5.3 million viewers.

The Call the Midwife Christmas Special sees the team heading off to the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The team of midwives are led to an area desperately in need of medical care on a mission from Mother Mildred (Miriam Margolyes). The midwives find themselves faced with dire operating conditions, bleak elements, and an alarming lack of access to fresh water and electricity.

The ninth season (series for you UK folks) opens on the funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965, the midwives grapple with a change in English society, with a new upper class on the rise and complex societal norms being challenged.

Call the Midwife stars Miriam Margolyes (Mother Mildred), Jenny Agutter (Sister Julienne), Linda Bassett (Nurse Crane), Judy Parfitt (Sister Monica Joan), Fenella Woolgar (Sister Hilda), Ella Bruccoleri (Sister Frances), Helen George (Trixie), Laura Main (Shelagh Turner), Jennifer Kirby (Valerie), Leonie Elliott (Lucille), Stephen McGann (Dr Turner), Cliff Parisi (Fred), Annabelle Apsion (Violet), Georgie Glen (Miss Higgins), Max Macmillan (Timothy), Trevor Cooper (Sgt Woolf) and Daniel Laurie (Reggie).