Call the Midwife

Based on Jennifer Worth's memoirs, Call the Midwife follows a group of nurse-midwives and nuns serving London's East End from the late 1950s onward. It's warm, big-hearted, and unafraid of difficult subjects — births and deaths, poverty and resilience, all rendered with enormous compassion. Few shows balance comfort and emotional weight so beautifully; it's the kind of series that makes you laugh and reach for the tissues in the same episode. Call the Midwife streams via PBS in the US.

About the show

Heidi Thomas adapted Call the Midwife from Jennifer Worth's trilogy of memoirs about her time as a midwife in 1950s East London, and when the source material ran out after series two, Worth herself gave Thomas her blessing to continue with original stories. Vanessa Redgrave has narrated the show as the older version of the central character since it began, and Thomas's own husband, Stephen McGann, has played Dr. Patrick Turner throughout the show's run. Now in its fifteenth series and past 130 episodes, it remains one of the BBC's longest-running dramas.