‘Call the Midwife’ creator says the show will reach a natural end

The writer of Call the Midwife has been chatting about the show’s future.

Originally set in the late 1950s, the BBC’s hit period drama about a group of nurse midwives working in the East End of London launched in January 2012.

The eighth season recently began on BBC One, introducing several new characters, with the latest episodes now set in 1964.

The upcoming season finale will be the show’s 70th episode.

Call the Midwife creator Heidi Thomas recently discussed how long she expects the series to go on for.

She told Radio Times: “We’re commissioned up to [Season 9] by the BBC, and we may well continue. And, if we did, there seems to be no limit to the interest and excitement of the world in the 1960s.”

She added: “I do know that the original nuns on whom the original books were based left Poplar in 1976, because the social and the medical climate had changed.

“They relocated to Birmingham and focused more on spiritual work. So I don’t know how far into the 1970s we could go.”

However, Thomas sounded hopeful about the show’s future: “Because every series has a new year attached to it, I think we could go on for a few years to come. But who knows?”

She joked: “We aren’t bored yet!”

Season 8 is airing at 8pm on Sunday nights on BBC One in the UK and will air in the USA this spring on Masterpiece on PBS.

The seventh season of Call the Midwife is available now on DVD on Amazon.