Call the Midwife

Call the Midwife is a British period drama television series about a group of nurse midwives working in the East End of London in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The original cast consisted of Jessica Raine, Jenny Agutter, Pam Ferris, Miranda Hart, Judy Parfitt, Helen George, Bryony Hannah, Laura Main, Cliff Parisi and Stephen McGann. Agutter, George, Main, Parisi and McGann are the remaining cast members from the first episode.

The TV series is produced by Neal Street Productions, a production company founded and owned by the film director and producer Sam Mendes, Call the Midwife executive producer Pippa Harris, and Caro Newling. The first series, set in 1957, premiered in the United Kingdom on 15 January 2012. The series was created by Heidi Thomas, originally based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth who worked with the Community of St. John the Divine, an Anglican religious order, at their convent in the East End in London. The order was founded as a nursing order in 1849. The show's storylines have extended beyond the memoirs to include new, historically-sourced material. For the most part it depicts the day-to-day lives of the midwives and those in their local neighbourhood of Poplar, with certain historical events of the era having a direct or indirect effect on the characters and storylines.

Call the Midwife achieved high ratings in its first series, making it the most successful new drama series on BBC One since 2001. A total of fourteen annual series, of eight episodes each, have aired subsequently year-on-year, along with an annual Christmas special broadcast every Christmas Day since 2012. It is also broadcast in the United States on the PBS network; the first series started on 30 September 2012.

Critical reception has been mostly positive, and the series has won numerous awards and nominations. It has been praised for tackling topical subjects and contemporary social, cultural and economic issues, including nationalised healthcare, the NHS, infertility, teen pregnancy, adoption, the importance of local community, miscarriage and stillbirths, abortion and unwanted pregnancies, birth defects, poverty, common illnesses, epidemic disease, prostitution, incest, religion and faith, racism and prejudice, same-sex attraction and female genital mutilation. Some aspects of love—maternal, paternal, filial, fraternal, sisterly, romantic, or the love of friends—are explored in every episode.

The plot follows newly qualified midwife Jenny Lee, as well as the work of the midwives and the nuns of Nonnatus House, a nursing convent and part of an Anglican religious order, coping with the medical problems in the deprived Poplar district of London's desperately poor East End in the 1950s. The Sisters and midwives carry out many nursing duties across the community. However, with between 80 and 100 babies being born each month in Poplar alone, the primary work is to help bring safe childbirth to women in the area and to look after their countless newborns.

In the first series, which is set in early 1957, the main themes include the "Baby Boom", issues of poverty in the East end and post-war immigration.

The second series, set in 1958, shows the introduction of gas and air as a form of pain relief, unexploded ordnance, an outbreak of tuberculosis, a baby born with spina bifida and ends with the condemning of the Nonnatus House building.

The third series, set in 1959, depicts cystic fibrosis, polio, caring for the terminally ill and midwifery in a prison context.