‘Call the Midwife’ tests the nuns and nurses as never before

“Call the Midwife” returns to Arizona PBS on Sundays at 7 p.m., beginning March 25 with a special two-hour season premiere and concluding May 6.

This season, Nonnatus House welcomes a new midwife, Lucille Anderson, the first West Indian midwife to be featured as a series regular. Elegant, compassionate and clever, Nurse Lucille is swift to settle in and brings a fresh new energy to life at Nonnatus House. Her story reflects the experiences of Caribbean nurses who traveled to the U.K. in the 1960s to support the expanding National Health Service.

Season 7 opens as the “Big Freeze” of 1963 continues and the midwives persevere through the intense winter. The nuns and nurses of Nonnatus House are being tested as they have never been before, both personally and professionally. All around them they see the old East End vanishing, as slum clearances make way for bold new tower blocks to accommodate expanding communities. They find themselves facing a wide range of medical challenges, from breech birth to cancer, Huntington’s chorea and cataracts. Trixie and Christopher continue to develop their romance, while Tom and Barbara enjoy life as a married couple. Nurse Crane’s authority is questioned from an unexpected source, and Sister Monica Joan is forced to accept her failing faculties. Additionally, life for the Turners is turned upside down when Shelagh decides to employ an au pair.

Dame Pippa Harris, Executive Producer for Neal Street Productions said, “We are thrilled to be bringing another series of ‘Call the Midwife’ to our loyal audience in America, together with our partners at PBS. The series goes from strength to strength thanks to Heidi Thomas’s creativity and skill as a screenwriter, and the brilliance of our cast and crew.”

“Call the Midwife” is regularly among the most-watched programs on PBS, with Season 6 drawing the highest ratings nationally since Season 3. Last season also logged over two million streams on PBS digital platforms, and the show’s 2017 holiday special was the most-watched special in the series’ history. Looking forward, the BBC has recommissioned “Call the Midwife” for its eighth and ninth seasons (complete with holiday specials), which will bring the nuns and midwives into the mid-1960s.

Season 7 of “Call the Midwife” premieres on Arizona PBS on Sunday, March 25, at 7 p.m. with a special two-hour event. The series continues each Sunday at 7 p.m. through May 6.