‘Call the Midwife’ producer promises ‘plenty of drama’ in Season 13
The boss of Call the Midwife has teased what’s coming up in the brand new season!
Following last month’s Christmas special, the BBC’s hit period drama about a group of nurse midwives in the East End of London is back.
Season 13 premiered in the UK last night with the first of eight new episodes set in 1969.
Watch a clip here:
Twelve years after Call the Midwife made its debut in January 2012, executive producer Dame Pippa Harris says the secret of the show’s long-running success is “down to [writer] Heidi Thomas’s genius for creating characters and developing storylines across such a broad spectrum of people and time.”
“Without Heidi, there wouldn’t be a Call the Midwife,” Harris explained. “She has this wonderful empathy. She creates people that audiences love and situations that they find riveting.”
Call the Midwife is currently airing in the UK at 8pm on Sunday nights on BBC One and streaming on BBC iPlayer.
Discussing what to expect as the new season unfolds, Dame Pippa Harris reveals: “We delve into problems with the new housing that was being built at the time in the East End of London, which of course initially people thought was going to be a panacea, get rid of the slums, but actually came with its own problems.
“Some of the flats were filled with mould and damp, and these are things that still affect people’s lives today. So, although the show is set so long ago, they are real problems that people encounter in their daily lives.”
“I think that’s one of the great reasons why people keep watching the show,” she suggests, and we agree!
The producer reckons Season 13 is “one of the most personal in terms of how we see several of our characters go through really tough times,” promising that there are “big events” coming up.
“We watch them dealing with those events ultimately in an uplifting way,” she reassures viewers, but there will be “plenty of drama” along the way!
With the new season of Call the Midwife reaching the final year of the 1960s, Dame Pippa Harris admits: “I was actually two at the time so I don’t remember it at all.”
An upcoming episode will feature the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969!
“I know from my husband and other people who are a tiny bit older than me that this was an enormous event in people’s lives,” recalls the producer.
“People stayed up through the night in order to watch it and actually watching what the team have created on screen, I found really moving. It’s an incredibly emotive sequence and I think people are going to love it.”
We can’t wait to see these scenes!
Season 13 will premiere in the US this spring on PBS Masterpiece.
Call the Midwife is available on DVD on Amazon.