Call the Midwife filming ninth season

UK period drama Call The Midwife, has completed filming for a Christmas special and has begun filming season nine.

Season 8 averaged nine million UK viewers. Season 9 will consist of eight episodes for 2020.

A tenth and eleventh series are already commissioned, keeping the show on air until 2022.

Heidi Thomas, Creator, Writer and Executive Producer, says: “After a magical Christmas experience in the Hebrides featuring wild seas, stormy skies and some very disobedient sheep, we return to the harsher reality of city life in 1965. Society is changing fast and in series nine we will see Nonnatus House shaken to its foundations.”

Call The Midwife airs in Australia on BBC First and ABC.

This year’s Christmas special will see the team take their work to the Outer Hebrides. Led by Mother Mildred, they embark on a trip to the remote yet idyllic Scottish island, where residents have a desperate need for nurses and midwives. Exposed to the elements, they operate in bleak conditions with limited access to water and electricity to help their patients, just in time to reconvene in Poplar for Christmas.

Opening with the funeral of Winston Churchill in January 1965, series nine then continues with Nonnatus House entering a bold and innovative era. As the tower blocks multiply, and a new East End rises from the ashes of the old, society becomes more prosperous, but more complex. Our familiar team of medics and midwives face unexpected challenges as the population shifts, rules change, and old diseases come back to haunt them. Alongside the joy and optimism of birth, they must cope with cases including diphtheria, drug abuse, cancer, tuberculosis, and fistula. Meanwhile, their own experiences are fuelled by love, loss, and doubt – and the very fabric of their lives is jeopardised when Nonnatus itself comes under threat of demolition.

Series nine cast includes; Miriam Margolyes (Mother Mildred), Jenny Agutter (Sister Julienne), Linda Bassett (Nurse Crane), Judy Parfitt (Sister Monica Joan), Fenella Woolgar (Sister Hilda), Ella Bruccoleri (Sister Frances), Helen George (Trixie), Laura Main (Shelagh Turner), Jennifer Kirby (Valerie), Leonie Elliott (Lucille), Stephen McGann (Dr Turner), Cliff Parisi (Fred), Annabelle Apsion (Violet), Georgie Glen (Miss Higgins), Max Macmillan (Timothy), Trevor Cooper (Sgt Woolf) and Daniel Laurie (Reggie).