All posts tagged: Midwifes

Call the Midwife’s Heidi Thomas says goodbye to Sister Monica Joan

Call the Midwife’s Heidi Thomas says goodbye to Sister Monica Joan

The end, when it came, didn’t arrive with a whimper or a bang. Instead, the conclusion-for-now of Call the Midwife will have been met, in living rooms from Aberdeen to Zouch (Nottinghamshire, trivia fiends), with sobs and sighs. Certainly, it was a tearjerker of an episode in which Midwife’s, er, midwife, showrunner Heidi Thomas, had doubled the usual doses of bittersweet poignancy and shiny optimism, injecting them into proceedings like emotional steroids. From Rosalind and Cyril’s shotgun nuptials and Beryl reconciling herself to being a Sister and never a mother, to Susan Mullucks gaining an independence unimaginable when she was born a thalidomide-affected baby a decade earlier, our 133rd visit with Nonnatus’s nuns’n’nurses delivered. Well of course it did. It was never more affecting and tender than when concerned with the passing of Sister Monica Joan. Hers was a death foretold, mostly by Sister Catherine, who was two-for-two in her predictions about Monica Joan’s demise – how her condition would worsen without treatment and who would guide her to the pearly gates. (With prognostics like …

Call The Midwife’s Helen George sports sultry leather look for loved-up evening with beau Dan Innes

Call The Midwife’s Helen George sports sultry leather look for loved-up evening with beau Dan Innes

Helen George enjoyed a star-studded date night with her beau, Dan Innes, on Thursday evening. Pictured at the Ham Yard Hotel in London, the couple – who confirmed their romance in January 2025 – got dressed up for a private screening of Call The Midwife‘s season 15 finale. Stepping out in leather high-waisted trousers and a plunging satin top, Helen, 41, beamed as she cuddled up to Dan, a real estate consultant whom she reportedly met on the A-list dating app, Raya.  © PA Images via Getty ImagesHelen George and Dan Innes pictured at the screening of the series 15 finale of Call the Midwife Putting on an equally stylish display, Dan, 51, was seen alongside Helen in an ink blue suede jacket, which he teamed with a classic black tee and tailored trousers. Flanked by Helen’s co-stars, the couple were joined by Victoria Yeates, Miriam Margolyes, Renee Bailey, Stephen McGann, and Natalie Quarry.  Shedding some light on Thursday’s screening, Call The Midwife‘s official Instagram account has since shared photos from the event, including one …

Call the Midwife’s Laura Main and Helen George are this week’s cover stars

Call the Midwife’s Laura Main and Helen George are this week’s cover stars

This week’s RT is a bittersweet issue. Bittersweet because it marks the end of the latest series of Call the Midwife. It’s a drama that has anchored Sunday nights each winter since 2012, and has been lapped up at “Law Towers” from the start. Your letters to RT suggest we are far from alone. Few series inspire such loyalty and such affection. We spoke to showrunner Heidi Thomas about her decision to “pause” the show and what it means to draw breath after 15 years. Thankfully, this is not a full stop. With a Second World War prequel plus a feature film in development, the world of Call the Midwife – or CTM, as we affectionately call it in the office (publishing, like the Army, does love an abbreviation) – looks set to evolve rather than disappear. The timing feels apt: Sunday 8 March is International Women’s Day, and also in this issue we’ve asked brilliant women writers to interview some of the actresses and authors behind this week’s other eagerly awaited dramas, from the …

Call the Midwife’s end near as Trixie set to leave Nonnatus House

Call the Midwife’s end near as Trixie set to leave Nonnatus House

There’s still plenty of life left in Call the Midwife yet. A World War two-era prequel series, a movie set overseas featuring current cast, and season 16 are all in the pipeline. But the end of the series as we have known it since 2012, when it first debuted, is fast approaching (some may argue we’re already there given the impact of the NHS’s sweeping changes on Nonnatus House. And of course, the series will end altogether sooner rather than later. But while Call the Midwife will one day be no more, its characters will live on beyond the credits – and it seems Trixie intends to remain in London, rather than relocating permanently to New York, despite admitting her marriage was on the rocks. In tonight’s episode (Sunday 1 March), she was offered the position of matron at The Lady Emily Clinic for Women and Babies, a private medical facility in Mayfair. Trixie completed a placement there back in season 10, but this would be a permanent move if she accepted – which she …

Call the Midwife’s Helen George “sobbed like baby” filming finale

Call the Midwife’s Helen George “sobbed like baby” filming finale

Call the Midwife fans will need to brace themselves ahead of the season 15 finale, which Helen George has described as “really emotional”. “There’s this scene, I won’t really go into detail, but it sort of encompasses all of the characters that we’ve had on the show over the last 15 years,” said the Trixie actor at the Radio Times Covers Party 2026. “And when I walked onto the set, I just sobbed, I sobbed like a baby. It was really emotional. So if I was a mess – and I’m heart of steel – then the audience will be a mess as well.” Renee Bailey, who plays Joyce, went on to say that it’s Call the Midwife “at its whole,” adding: “It makes you laugh, it makes you cry. It’s a hug and it’s also heartbreaking. It’s a mix of everything, but I think audiences are going to love it.” “I’ve been thinking about it more and more as we get into the spring”, said Rosalind actor Natalie Quarry. “I think it really will, …

Call the Midwife’s Trixie makes painful admission about Matthew

Call the Midwife’s Trixie makes painful admission about Matthew

As far as Call the Midwife fans were concerned, Trixie and Matthew’s marriage, despite being long-distance, was ticking along quite nicely. Matthew departed London for New York in the season 13 finale to rebuild his business prospects after accumulating debt well in excess of £250,000, as well as losing his seat on the board of the company he inherited from his late father. And after initially deciding not to join him, Trixie changed her mind and relocated to America for a period before ultimately splitting her life between her work in Poplar and the States. But as of late, she has remained firmly in the English capital – where she’s been needed amid growing uncertainty over Nonnatus House’s future – and clearly, it’s starting to take its toll. After Nurse Crane noticed that Trixie didn’t join her friends and colleagues one evening for hot drinks and biscuits, she took a tray up to her room, where the midwife’s demeanour was noticeably downbeat. “I can’t seem to settle, Phyllis,” she admitted, with Nurse Crane suggesting that …

Call the Midwife’s Nonnatus House jeopardy storyline has lost its edge

Call the Midwife’s Nonnatus House jeopardy storyline has lost its edge

Nonnatus House is in peril. As the National Health Service undergoes widespread restructuring to create a more unified system in Call the Midwife, the status of smaller, community-led programmes and initiatives remains under threat. And with more people choosing hospital births over home ones, questions about how much longer it will survive remain ever present. But for now, it does survive, continuing to provide essential care to the people of Poplar – although Sister Julienne has been informed that funding will cease from the end of the year if they don’t ditch their religious garb. A deliberate nudge towards extinction? Or simply a way to keep them in line? Only time will tell. “That’s fine in itself,” Jenny Agutter said of the order to ditch their habits. “But it’s actually a bigger question, which is that Sister Julienne sees the nuns as being missionaries in the East End. And she, as a nun, is very much aware of the fact that the first service they have is to God. The habit is very much to …

Call the Midwife’s Cyril meets Rosalind’s parents in first look

Call the Midwife’s Cyril meets Rosalind’s parents in first look

In a teaser for Call the Midwife’s upcoming episode, which aired at the end of season 15’s debut, we got our first glimpse of Rosalind’s parents, who are set to meet Cyril for the first time as their relationship moves to the next level. And in a selection of first-look pictures, which you can see here, her mum and dad join the couple for tea, which sounds lovely in theory. But as we know, it doesn’t quite go to plan. “Both Major Clifford (David Bark-Jones) and Josephine (Natasha Joseph) are polite but as the afternoon draws on, the atmosphere becomes brittle and strained,” reads the official synopsis, which Zephryn Taitte previously spoke about. “He has to wrestle with her parents and how they may view him and judge him, rightly or wrong,” he said. “So, there’s a lot for Cyril to contend with this season. There’s love, but it’s bittersweet.” Natalie Quarry confirmed that the couple – who first grew close in last year’s Christmas special, before then growing closer once Cyril and Lucille’s divorce …

Call the Midwife’s Sister Veronica makes a startling admission

Call the Midwife’s Sister Veronica makes a startling admission

Ahead of Call the Midwife season 15, Rebecca Gethings revealed that Sister Veronica would be “forever changed” by the path her storyline was set to take. “You’re going to see a journey for Sister Veronica,” she teased. “I don’t know where she’ll end up, but she will have been to some places and seen some things she’s possibly never experienced before. “She’ll be forever changed by this series – so watch this space!” And in the premiere, which aired on Sunday 11th January, the reason why became clear. During an emotional exchange with Trixie’s brother Geoffrey, Sister Veronica – or Beryl, as we now know her – made a startling confession. Reflecting on the life she has chosen and the sacrifice it demands, she said: “It isn’t about when we can’t speak, it’s about what we can never say, what we can never name, because that might expose us, lay us bare. We can’t afford that, can we?” When Geoffrey acknowledged that indeed no one wants “to hear them howling”, Sister Veronica quietly admitted she …