BBC’s Midwife delivers until 2022

Call the Midwife’s eighth season ended in January

BBC1 in the UK has ordered a further two seasons of hit drama Call the Midwife, meaning the show will remain on air until at least 2022.

The Neal Street Productions show’s recently concluded eighth season is the highest-rating returning drama across all channels in 2019 so far, according to the UK pubcaster.

The ninth season, due to air in 2020, is set to start filming this month, with two Christmas specials also among the recent 10th and 11th season (8×60′) orders from Charlotte Moore, director of BBC content, and Piers Wenger, controller of BBC drama commissioning.

The show has been one of Britain’s most popular drama series since it launched in 2012, with the eighth run averaging nine million viewers per episode, making it BBC1’s biggest show of 2019.

It follows the work of a maternity ward during the 1950s, exploring many areas of medical and social history including the impact of disability, teenage pregnancy and intersex representation.

Heidi Thomas continues to lead the writing team, with Pippa Harris as executive producer for Neal Street. The executive producer for the BBC is Mona Qureshi, with Ann Tricklebank as producer.