Midwife Calling (Television Series)

Midwife Calling is a BBC period drama series about a group of nurse midwives and nuns working in the East End of London in the 1920s. It serves as a spin-off of Call the Midwife. It stars Lizzle Caplan, Ruth Wilson, Rebecca Hall, Celia Imrie, Emily Watson and Peter Davison in main roles. The first series, set in 1922, began airing on October 8th 2017.

Midwife Calling achieved very high ratings in its first series, making it the most successful new drama series on BBC One since it's parent show. Since then two more series of eight episodes each have aired year-on-year, along with an annual Christmas special broadcast every Christmas Eve since 2017. It is also broadcast in the United States on the PBS channel, with the first series starting on January 30, 2018.

A fourth series is currently in development.

Plot
The series follows American nurse Anna Conway (Lizzie Caplan) as she arrives at Nonnatus House to start a career as a midwife in the UK. Also arriving is new nun Sister Evangeline (Ruth Wilson) and she makes her mark on Poplar immediately. 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.

Cast and Characters
Like Vanessa Redgrave narrates Call the Midwife as an older Jenny Lee, Judy Parfitt narrates Midwife Calling as an older Sister Monica Joan.
 * Lizzie Caplan as Nurse Anna Conway
 * Ruth Wilson as Sister Evangeline
 * Rebecca Hall as Nurse Coleen Welch
 * Celia Imrie as Sister Rowena Mary
 * Emily Watson as Sister Monica Joan
 * Peter Davison as Richard "Ricky" Dawes
 * Emily Blunt as Sister Helena
 * Bonnie Wright as Nurse Nancy Collins

Critical response
A second series of Midwife Calling was immediately commissioned after the drama's opening episode attracted an audience of nearly 10 million viewers. The second episode increased its audience to 10.47 million, while the third continued the climb to 10.66. Episode 4's rating of 10.89 million overtook Call The Midwife as the largest first series audience for original drama on British television in recent years.

In the United States, the series 1 transmission on PBS drew an average household audience rating of 2.1, translating into 3.0 million viewers – 50 percent above PBS' primetime average for the 2017–18 series.

The winter of 2018 PBS broadcast of the first series of Call the Midwife in the United States received widespread critical acclaim, earning a Metacritic score of 8.0. The Wall Street Journal declared that "this immensely absorbing drama has its pleasures", while The Washington Post stated that "the cast is marvelous, the gritty set pieces are meticulously recreated". TV Guide called the series "a delight to watch", while the San Francisco Chronicle described it as "sentimental, poignant and often heartbreaking".

The second series opened with a record overnight audience of 9.3 million UK viewers, going on to achieve a consolidated series average of 10.47 million viewers. This was almost two million above the slot average, and by some distance the most popular UK drama in every week of transmission. When viewing figures from BBC's iPlayer video streaming service and a narrative repeat were included as part of the BBC Live Plus 7 metric, the total number of viewers per week was found to be almost 12 million.

Awards
Midwife Calling won 3 BAFTAs and 2 Emmys for its first series.

Related Media
Call the Midwife