This moving, intimate, funny and true-to-life series, based on the best-selling memoirs of the late Jennifer Worth, tells colorful stories of midwifery and families in London’s East End in the 1950s. Jenny Lee, a young woman raised in the wealthy English countryside, has chosen to become a nurse and now, as a newly qualified midwife, has gone to work in the poorest area of the city. Attached to an order of nursing nuns at Nonnatus House, Jenny is part of a team of women who minister to expectant mothers, many of whom give birth at home in appalling conditions. The drama follows Jenny as she meets her patients and learns to love the people who live in the East End. Starring newcomer Jessica Raine as Jenny, the cast includes Jenny Agutter, Pam Ferris, Miranda Hart and Judy Parfitt. Three other new faces, Helen George, Bryony Hannah and Laura Main complete the regular ensemble cast. Vanessa Redgrave provides the narration as the mature Jenny.
WATCH HIGHLIGHTS
Watch Behind the Scenes Video.
Sunday, September 30 at 8:00 p.m.
Episode One
In the spring of 1957, newly minted midwife Jenny Lee arrives in the East End of London to begin her career. After overcoming the initial shock that her new home, Nonnatus House, is a convent and not a private hospital, she quickly becomes immersed in her new life. Living with nuns and working in a community of colorful characters are different from anything Jenny has previously encountered. Through her, experience the sorrows and joys that come with being a midwife.
Sunday, October 7 at 8:00 p.m.
Episode Two
As Jenny Lee settles into her role, there is a new arrival at Nonnatus House — Chummy. A welcome pair of extra hands, Chummy sets about showing her worth, but her overwhelming desire to please and her inability to ride a bike prove obstacles in gaining the respect of Sister Evangelina. Meanwhile, a chance encounter with Mary, a pregnant young runaway, forces Jenny to see an unfamiliar, darker side of life.
*Stay tuned. More episodes comingr in October.*
- Profile -
Jenny Agutter (Midwife's Sister Julienne)
“It was actually extraordinarily nice,” says Jenny Agutter to Claire Webb of www.radiotimes.com, of her three-and-a-half months with wimple and without make-up. “You weren’t thinking about whether this is the right costume or what one looks like. The nearest I got to civvies was taking the wimple off.”
Jenny Agutter became a household name playing Roberta in the 1970 film The Railway Children, but it was a series of more revealing roles that have endeared her to men of a certain age: Australian outback movie Walkabout in 1971 with its skinny-dipping scene, when Agutter was 16; An American Werewolf in London, where she played a comely nurse; and a scantily clad role in sci-fi romp Logan’s Run.
“Three decades on, I still will not go to a science-fiction convention because there’ll be people coming up to me in little green outfits,” laughs Agutter, with a mock-shudder.
Playing Sister Julienne
Her latest makeover is no less dramatic (if a lot more demure), and that’s what attracted Agutter to the role of Sister Julienne. “It’s quite different from anything I’ve ever played. It’s not about being good; it’s about the strength of character of a person that lives in a convent in the East End in the 50s.”
Beneath the wimple, Agutter found a strong-willed woman with a twinkle in her eye: “I met Sister Julienne’s cousin, who gave me some wonderful little hints about what she was like, and she said she had a wry humour.”
It’s a side that emerges in the delightful scenes in which Sister Julienne arbitrates (and sometimes fuels) her fellow sisters’ squabbles — scenes Agutter clearly relished. “The nuns are not perfect. Their way of life doesn’t mean they all get along with one another, and the fact that they don’t get along is very funny.”
Reality bites
What wasn’t funny was the squalor just beyond the convent doors, and Agutter was as shocked as the trainee midwife in the opening scenes. “I came from the 1960s ‘me’ generation, whereas the 50s were about recovering from two world wars. They were depressing and difficult times, and nowhere more so than in the Docklands.”Yet there are a few things Agutter feels we could learn from the big-hearted sisters of Nonnatus House. “We’re seeing the difficulties that ‘me, me, me’ attitude has created. The people sitting outside St Paul’s have a point. One’s got to look at those issues and see how you can make society work.”
Next project
“I’m sworn to secrecy! I wasn’t allowed a script until I got there, and when I did, I felt like a complete child being on big sets and a huge parking lot full of Winnebagos.”
She does let slip that two of these housed Spider-Man and Iron Man; we suspect Agutter won’t be able to avoid sci-fi conventions for much longer.
This is an edited version of an article from the issue of Radio Times magazine that went on sale 17 January 2012.
Read more about Jenny Augutter and Call the Midwife
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