Watch the trailer for 2019’s ‘Call the Midwife’ Christmas episode!

The BBC has released a trailer for this year’s festive Call the Midwife special.

The hit period drama series returns later this month with a brand new 90-minute episode set in the Scottish Hebrides Islands.

Call the Midwife creator Heidi Thomas commented: “It was so magical filming the Christmas episode in the Outer Hebrides, it was possibly the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my life.

“The best thing about filming the Christmas special for me was, very unusually I stayed in the same hotel as the actors, there was the cast and myself in this rather amazing castle, it was just us at breakfast every morning and it was just us at dinner every night. It was like a thriller, I kept thinking it really was like a PD James.”

Hinting at what to expect in the special, Thomas revealed: “The interesting thing about series nine is that our characters will challenge their own expectations of the jobs they do. Some of them have been working at Nonnatus House for years, with medical and scientific developments making life quite comfortable.

“I wanted there to be a challenge to their certainty which works so well in the Christmas Special. The Outer Hebrides didn’t immediately spring to mind, I briefly considered Hong Kong because our story could take us back there, but it wasn’t going to tick our magical Christmas box and in my research I discovered the role that triple duty nurses played in the Hebrides at that time.

“A triple duty nurse is a midwife, a district nurse and a health visitor all rolled into one which is exactly the skillset our midwives use in Poplar.”

The show’s writer added: “The locations are incredible, Annie Tricklebank our producer went up on an advance visit and she found a lighthouse and the most incredible pre-historic standing stones.

“She found an incredible medieval church which had been used for a long time as a youth hostel, it was deconsecrated but it was possibly one of the most magical and holy buildings I’ve ever been into. The scenery itself, the coastline, the views, the rocks, even the trees and the vegetation were just magical.”

Watch the trailer:

 

2019’s Christmas special airs on Wednesday 25th December at 7pm on BBC One in the UK and at 9pm ET on PBS Masterpiece in the US.

The ninth season of Call the Midwife then starts in the UK in January and it’ll air in the US a couple of months later.

Season 8 is available on DVD on Amazon.