Call the Midwife has been one of the BBC’s most popular dramas since its premiere in 2012, and its longevity isn’t hard to explain. Based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, the show follows a group of nurse midwives working in the impoverished East End of London in the late 1950s and 1960s. It’s a show about birth, death, community, and the slow transformation of a society, told with a warmth and sincerity that feels almost radical in an era of cynical prestige television.
The show’s appeal cuts across demographics in a way that few dramas manage. It draws audiences who typically watch period dramas, medical shows, and social realism, but it also reaches viewers who simply respond to stories told with genuine compassion. Its Christmas specials are a BBC tradition, and the show has maintained strong ratings across more than a decade of production.
Compassion as Storytelling Philosophy
Call the Midwife’s most distinctive quality is its moral clarity. The show has deep empathy for its characters, from the midwives themselves to the families they serve, and it extends that empathy without conditions. The poor, the marginalized, the disabled, and the ostracized are portrayed with dignity and complexity. This isn’t naive or sentimental; the show confronts poverty, racism, disability discrimination, and gender inequality with honesty. It simply refuses to treat suffering as entertainment.
The medical storylines are handled with a specificity that gives them real weight. The show doesn’t shy away from the physical realities of childbirth and medical care in an era before modern technology, and these sequences carry genuine tension. The combination of medical drama and social history creates episodes that are both gripping and educational.
The ensemble cast, which has evolved significantly over thirteen seasons, is consistently excellent. Jenny Agutter’s Sister Julienne and the late Judy Parfitt’s Sister Monica Joan provide continuity and emotional depth, while newer cast members refresh the show without disrupting its identity. The community of Nonnatus House, the Anglican convent where the midwives are based, functions as a found family that gives the show its emotional center.
The show’s engagement with social history is one of its greatest strengths. As the series moves through the late 1950s and into the 1960s, it addresses thalidomide, the pill, abortion, homosexuality, racial prejudice, and the emergence of the NHS with intelligence and sensitivity. These aren’t just plot devices but opportunities to explore how individuals experience large-scale social change.
Thirteen Seasons and the Weight of Formula
The biggest challenge for any long-running drama is maintaining freshness, and Call the Midwife’s formula has become predictable. Each episode typically follows a birth-related case of the week alongside longer character arcs, and after thirteen seasons, the structure holds few surprises. The emotional beats, while still effective, arrive on schedule.
Cast turnover, while necessary for a show of this length, means that viewers regularly lose characters they’ve grown attached to. The departures are generally handled well, but the constant cycle of introduction and farewell can prevent deeper investment in newer characters who may not stay long enough to develop fully.
The show’s gentle tone, while its defining quality, occasionally prevents it from engaging with darker material as fully as it could. Some storylines are resolved more neatly than reality would allow, and the show’s fundamental optimism, its belief that compassion can overcome most obstacles, sometimes simplifies situations that resist easy resolution.
The narration by Vanessa Redgrave, framing the series as an older Jenny Worth’s memories, is elegant in the early seasons but becomes increasingly disconnected as the show moves beyond Worth’s memoirs into original storytelling.
Quiet Radicalism in a Warm Package
Call the Midwife’s most underrated quality is its political courage. The show consistently centers working-class women’s experiences and advocates for social justice, but it does so through storytelling rather than polemic. Its treatment of marginalized groups is progressive without being preachy, and its historical perspective allows it to draw implicit parallels with contemporary issues without hammering the point.
Should You Watch Call the Midwife?
If you appreciate character-driven drama, social history, or medical storytelling, Call the Midwife is essential viewing. Start from the beginning and let the world draw you in. Skip it only if you find period drama inherently uninteresting or if the show’s sincere, compassionate tone feels too gentle for your taste. This is comfort television with substance, and there’s nothing else quite like it.
The Verdict on Call the Midwife
Call the Midwife has earned its place as one of the BBC’s most treasured dramas through consistent quality, genuine compassion, and a willingness to engage with difficult social issues through the lens of ordinary people’s lives. Its formula has grown predictable, and thirteen seasons inevitably bring diminishing returns. But the show’s core achievement, making empathy feel exciting and warmth feel radical, remains undiminished. In a television era obsessed with darkness, Call the Midwife proves that light can be just as compelling.