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Neal Street buys TV rights for Midwife bestseller

Neal Street Productions, the UK indie production house co-founded by American Beauty director Sam Mendes, has secured the TV rights to Jennifer Worth’s bestselling non-fiction book Call the Midwife.

The company has attached dramatist Heidi Thomas (Cranford, Ballet Shoes) to adapt the book into a TV series. It will be exec produced by Pippa Harris and produced by Tara Cook. Neal Street expects to begin pre-production on the project in spring 2009.

Worth, who will act as consultant on the TV series, said she was “thrilled at the idea of a TV dramatisation” of her book. “I think my agent could not have found a better film company for the job,” she added.

The book is the first of a trilogy by Worth, detailing her experiences as a midwife in London’s Docklands during the 1950s. The Phoenix paperback has been at number one in the non-fiction bestseller list for five weeks.

Harris, Neal Street’s head of film, said: “Call the Midwife is a unique memoir which has really captured the public’s imagination. It’s a fascinating insight, not only into the hardship of the post-war years, but also into the indomitable spirit and true sense of community that she witnessed in the East End.”

Call the Midwife is Neal Street’s second TV project, following its dramatisation of Alexander Masters’ book Stuart: A Life Backwards, which it produced for BBC2/HBO.

The film won this year’s Royal Television Society best single drama award and the Reims International TV Festival’s best telefilm. It has also been nominated in the teleilm category at the forthcoming 2008 Banff World Television Festival.

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