‘Call the Midwife’ recap: What happened in 2022’s Christmas special?

Call the Midwife is back with the show’s eleventh festive special!

The BBC’s long-running period drama series about a group of nurse midwives in the East End of London celebrated a decade on air earlier this year.

Following Season 11’s emotional finale, fans were overjoyed to be back in Poplar tonight for this year’s feature-length Christmas episode, written as always by Call the Midwife creator Heidi Thomas.

And we won’t have to wait very long for more, with Season 12’s premiere date set for New Year’s Day in the UK.

(American viewers will have to hang on until the spring, when the new season airs on PBS in the US.)

Here’s a plot recap for this year’s Christmas special, which premiered on BBC One at 7.55pm on Sunday 25th December 2022:

It is December 1967 and with Christmas fast approaching, life in Poplar is returning to normal after the terrible train crash.

Trixie (Helen George) arrives back from Portofino, looking poised and beautiful, much to the delight of Matthew (Olly Rix).

The midwives move the maternity clinic into new premises and are delighted when one of their first patients through the door is Rhoda Mullocks (Liz White) who the team know well.

Rhoda is heavily pregnant, and understandably nervous, after her last baby was born with limbs that have been affected by Thalidomide.

Nurse Crane (Linda Bassett) cares for a heavily pregnant single mother, recently released from prison.

Meanwhile, Sister Frances (Ella Bruccoleri) is called out to deliver a Sylheti mother’s child in a garment factory in a rough area of Poplar.

Elsewhere, Fred (Cliff Parisi) decides that Poplar needs to come together to raise money for those families still affected by the train crash and pitches the wonderful idea of a festive talent show – Poplartunity Knocks!

Season 11 is available on DVD on Amazon.