Leading stars and top production team join Sunday evening serial based on million-selling memoirs about 1950s childbirth that hopes to emulate Cranford's success
Bedpans, surgical gloves and cries of pain may not sound likely ingredients for the BBC's Sunday evening costume drama slot, but Call the Midwife is a series that aims to take the audience into new territory ? childbirth 1950s-style.
Leading female talent drawn from several generations of British stars ? including Vanessa Redgrave, Pam Ferris, Jenny Agutter and Miranda Hart ? will come together in the new year to tell of the joys and hardships of a group of midwives working in London's East End in the 50s. The drama will be the first to put childbirth, and its place in social history, at the heart of a television serial.
On screen and off, it is a very female production. Screenwriter Heidi Thomas, who adapted the hit serial Cranford ? a Sunday night triumph that the makers of Call the Midwife hope to emulate ? says there are some in the television industry who have asked her whether she thinks men will watch the new drama. Her response is forthright. "They may well watch, but people don't ask whether enough women will watch Top Gear."
Other female members of the team on Call the Midwife include Eve Stewart, who earned an Oscar nomination for production design on The King's Speech and has now recreated East End street scenes for the new serial.
The creators and stars of the show hope to highlight a neglected area of women's lives. "A woman's relationship with her midwife is very important," said Agutter, who plays Sister Julienne, senior nun at the convent where the midwives live. "We seem to have almost lost track of what is a very critical job and this story is about the beginning of modern midwifery and about the women who supported each other through what was difficult work, but was also a calling."
She has had personal experience of the benefits of a good midwife. "No one in their right mind would want to go through a surgical procedure like that for no reason. Women want to be supported, whatever they decide," said Agutter. "I had my baby at 37 and had a long labour, but when a good midwife came on shift and gave me the right advice it really made a difference."
The timing is impeccable. Childbirth appears to be near the top of the public agenda. Last week a major study into childbirth in Britain revealed that home births carry a higher risk for the babies of first-time mothers, though the British Medical Journal research, which used data from almost 65,000 births across England, pointed out that this risk of harm was less than 1%.
Midwife-led care, it was found, was more likely to lead to a natural birth. Earlier in the week Nice, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence, had advised that all pregnant women be allowed to have a caesarean delivery once they were informed of the risks.
The cast, led by television newcomer Jessica Raine and fellow Rada graduates Helen George and Bryony Hannah, will appear alongside a succession of real newcomers: newborn babies. Miranda Hart, in her first major role in a drama, will play the part of Chummy, a devout but rather unlikely addition to the East End team. Working under director Philippa Lowthorpe, who was lauded for her work on Five Daughters last year, the cast will bring to life testimony originally set down in a trilogy of bestselling books. Call the Midwife, a memoir written by the late Jennifer Worth, became a word-of-mouth success in 2002 and her three bestselling books have each sold more than a million copies, as well as spawning a new non-fiction sub-genre of medical and social history.
After Worth's death this summer at the age of 75, the social historian David Kynaston wrote: "Worth is not a believer [in God] at the outset, but things begin to stir as a result of what she witnesses, and at one level her books are the record of a spiritual journey. Yet in all probability it will be as a major historical document that her trilogy enjoys its most enduring reputation."
Born Jennifer Lee in 1935, Worth died just before filming for the BBC1 drama began, but not before she had worked closely with Thomas.
The screenwriter points out that Worth's first book was written in response to an article that wondered why there were so few midwives in literature. "Jennifer read those words and took up the challenge," said Thomas. The inspirational article had been written by Terri Coates, the midwife who was to advise on the birth scenes in the new drama.
"Jennifer and I did get to know each other quite well before she died," said Thomas. "We got on, so we collaborated more than we needed to. She was a religious woman, but she also had a very liberal sensibility."
Thomas, a passionate supporter of the NHS, said she believes the serial has a lot to say about present-day childbirth, despite the squalor and deprivation of the East End after the war. "Not everything that has changed has been an improvement. Women today are often trying to have a perfect birth within a culture of fear. And the whole thing is dressed up in ribbons," said Thomas.
"Eve Stewart had just come from her Oscar nomination, but she really wanted to make this because of the books and because she had grown up in the East End, in a place that has almost disappeared," said Neal Street Productions' Pippa Harris, executive producer of Call the Midwife. Harris underlines the fact that the crew and cast all hope the drama will provide a legacy to Worth's career.
"Jennifer wanted women to have a choice. Part of the reason women might choose caesareans is that they don't feel secure. Giving birth now is safer and much more comfortable, but women need the feeling they are cared for by the people working around them."
Agutter agrees: "Today we are all taken away from childbirth and from the elderly, and somehow these two things, at either end of life, have got to come back into our lives."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/nov/27/bbc-call-the-midwife
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