Call The Midwife delivers backstreet abortions and intersex plots in new series
The hit BBC show is back on our screens at 8pm on Sunday and covers everything from feminism to fashion
Nicola Methven
Call The Midwife is back on our screens on Sunday (Image: BBC)
Call the Midwife returned on Sunday with the tale of a young woman forced to have her womb removed after a horribly botched abortion.
And the show's 10 million viewers will have plenty more tear-jerking stories and challenging subjects to grapple with over the next seven weeks of the eighth series.
As well as many medical firsts, the nuns and nurses of Nonnatus House in 1964, also face the plentiful emotional and social ­problems affecting communities in Poplar, East London.
The stories, often heart-breaking but always painstakingly researched, are historically accurate and sensitively told.
Have your tissues ready...
Back street abortions
Britain is still three years away from legalised abortion in series eight of Call The Midwife (Image: BBC/Neal Street Productions)
Call The Midwife star Jessica Raine pregnant with first child
In series eight Britain is still three years away from abortions being legalised and this issue will rear its head several times, as women in London's East End have few choices when it comes to unwanted pregnancies.
Four of the eight episodes will include a storyline around abortion and nurse Valerie Dyer (Jennifer Kirby) is particularly affected by the horrors she witnesses.
Jennifer says: "Valerie obviously takes it to heart because that community is where she's from, it's where she's always lived so she feels it very personally that women are having to go to this level.
Helen George, who plays Trixie, says the storyline stayed with her long after the cameras stopped rolling.
"The abortion issue is a thread throughout the series and it's really wonderful, but quite tough."
Intersex plotline
Helen George praised the actress at the centre of the intersex plotline (Image: Mike Marsland/WireImage)
Call The Midwife's Helen George opens up about Trixie's emotional return
One young woman discovers she has hidden male genitalia after finally plucking up the courage to tell the nurses she's never had a period.
She is found to be "intersex" with no chance of ever bearing children.
Her shocked fiance has no idea what to do, eventually adopting the time-honoured tactic of heading for the hills.
Writer Heidi Thomas explains: "A young woman discovers on the eve of her marriage that she has what doctors then called 'Testicular Feminisation Syndrome'.
"That isn't just a medical story it's a question of identity."
Helen George, says the girl playing the part was fresh out of drama school.
"It was her very first role and she was so professional. It's a really interesting storyline and one you wouldn't really think would be on Call the Midwife - it felt like a modern storyline.
"Heidi's always very clever with that and it's always timely, but of it's time. The series does hold a mirror up to society.
"The story brings together the medical side with the emotional turmoil she has to face.
"It really ricochets over several members of her family and was fascinating to deal with."
Fashion plays a big part in this series (Image: Daily Mirror)
It's the 60s, so hemlines have started to shoot up (Image: BBC/Neal Street Productions/Nicky Johnston)
Many of the cast have a totally new wardrobe (Image: BBC/NEAL STREET/NICKY JOHNSTON)
The 60s have really started to swing and hemlines in Poplar have shot up.
Fashion is a big part of the new series for the young nurses and glamorous Trixie Franklin (Helen George) is at the forefront.
Helen says: "Trixie has come back from Italy fully healed and with a new wardrobe. Which is just delightful!
"This series all the girls are getting really amazing costumes. We've got a great new costume designer (Claire Lynch) and really interesting looks. I wear this hat modelled on the black leather cap John Lennon wore."
But vintage footwear was not such fun. "Feet were so tiny in the 60s, none of the shoes bloody fit! We took them off a lot," laughs Helen.
Feminism is at the front and centre in this series (Image: BBC)
Heidi is proud the whole series is about women, whether they're giving birth, delivering babies or performing any of the other varied roles seen on the show.
She says: "We've now said the word vagina several times but we've never said the word feminism because we don't preach it, we live it.
"It's in every breath we take. And if other dramas don't breach those ramparts, it shouldn't be our pride it should be their shame. Because I honestly think what we are doing is not unique, it's what the world is about.
"Feminism isn't a story or a challenge like a breach birth, it's in the DNA of everything we do. We're now known for that and I'm very proud of that.
"Surely all dramas should create interesting female characters and show women experiencing things which are important and resonant and have implications for the other people."
Annette Crosbie plays a fiesty old woman (Image: BBC/Neal Street Productions)
One Foot in the Grave's Annette Crosbie guest stars in episode two as a woman who drove ambulances during the war and who went on hunger strike to fight for women's right to vote.
She plays elderly and infirm Miss Millgrove, a lonely hoarder suffering with leg ulcers, who has left the neighbours horrified by "her filth".
She is determined to stay in her own house rather than move to a nursing home, even resorting to throwing parcels of her own excrement at the police as they try to force her out.
The scared old woman asks: "What will become of me? I know nowhere else."
Warm-hearted Lucille is touched by her plight.
"A woman of substance can live anywhere," she tells her. "And you, Miss Millgrove, are a woman of substance."
The new nuns
There are some new faces in Poplar (Image: Neal Street Productions/BBC)
Fenella Woolgar plays Sister Hilda, who is a bit bossy but has the grace to realise when she's overstepped the mark.
She says: "It was quite weird. I've had children [but] with the birthing scenes, it is quite intimidating because most of the time they use the newborn [not] the prosthetic.
"They are long days and they are incredibly concentrated and having the real mum and dad there can be stressful."
Ella Bruccoleri plays young and naive Sister Frances who finds the 60s quite tough.
"She definitely struggles to fit in, that becomes more and more apparent" Ella says.
"At the Mother House she had other young nuns and postulants around her but she doesn't have that here ."
Jenny Agutter, who plays the much-loved lead nun, Sister Julienne, say: "What is wonderful about that young nun is that she comes with such joy and enthusiasm but it's also a young woman at a period when so many young women are embracing something completely different."
Medical firsts
Sickle-cell anaemia is put under the microscope in Call The Midwife (Image: BBC/Neal Street Productions)
There are many medical firsts coming up. Dr Turner is involved in the first cervical smear and prostate tests.
Actor Stephen McGann, below, says: "I was at the business end of the prostate! Those examinations. Things are changing for everybody, even men."
His character also encounters sickle-cell anaemia for the first time, in a family newly arrived from Ghana.
With the whole family suffering similar symptoms including chronic pains, Dr Turner finally diagnoses the blood disease, complaining there is "precious little" about it in British medical books.
"It's shameful really," he admits.
Heidi says: "Trixie is instrumental in something which only Call the Midwife could use as a selling point which is the first cervical smear tests.
"And we have the first male prostate examination I've ever seen on popular television at 8pm."
Another medical plot tells the story of a little boy born with a cleft lip and palate and the effect that has on the wider family.
McGann says the baby's features were created using CGI.
There is also a storyline involving sexually transmitted diseases in pregnancy, where expectant wives are infected by wayward husbands.
Call the Midwife, BBC1, Sundays, 8pm.
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