Call The Midwife – A Superb TV Show
Call The Midwife on PBS is one of my new obsession TV shows to watch. I was hooked after the first 15 minutes. The acting is superb. Have you been watching the show? If not, get you to PBS to catch up online. This highly successful British TV series is based on a memoir trilogy by Jennifer Worth.
Call The Midwife takes place in 1950s poor East End London. It’s about a community of nursing nuns and midwives dedicated to helping the poor with home births and other medical care. Each episode highlights the drama of a pregnant woman’s trials and her family life and how the midwives and nuns handle each situation. Filming locations and set design look authentic enough to transport you away to another time and place. When the show is over you blink awake and can’t wait for next week’s episode.
In the books the nuns and midwives live at Nonnatus House convent. In real life the author worked for the Sisters of St. John the Divine in Whitechapel. The show re-created the convent at an old unused college in Mill Hill, London called St. Joseph’s College. The college has room to film all the convent rooms like the bedrooms, dining room, kitchen, and examination rooms. The different homes the midwives and nurses visit are filmed and staged there too.
CC Wikimedia Commons Author: Martin Addison
St. Joseph College, unfortunately, has been sold by developers now and Call The Midwife is starting to integrate the nuns losing their home into the storyline.
The cobbled streets and alleyways where we see the midwives cycling are shot at Chatham historic dockyard in Kent. Film companies have used the dockyard for many movies, TV shows, documentaries and music videos, most especially for the authentic cobbled stone streets. Some movies filmed there are Les Miserables, both Sherlock Holmes movies, The Mummy and Diamonds Are Forever to list a few.
The midwives drinking tea in their uniforms of blue dress, white-collar, and maroon sweater.
Examination rooms filmed inside St. Joseph College and 1950s hospital equipment.
The call center where expectant mothers call-in for the midwives to come help them during their delivery.
A lot of babies appear in Call The Midwife. The above photos are from a baby beauty pageant episode. It amazing how real the prosthetic babies used for delivery scenes look.
For an in-depth look inside the college see this photo list on Flickr by Matt Smith
Website link: For more about the series Call the Midwife
Source link: The Historic Dockyard Chatham
