Midwife memoirs hit the small screen

Midwives magazine: Issue 1 :: 2012

Actor and television star Pam Ferris talks to Rob Dabrowski about her experience of starring in the BBC’s acclaimed Call the Midwife series.

Actor and television star Pam Ferris talks to Rob Dabrowski about her experience of starring in the BBC’s acclaimed Call the Midwife series.

She may be best known for her role as Ma Larkin in The Darling Buds of May, or Aunt Marge in Harry Potter, but now Pam Ferris has donned a wimple for the television adaptation of Jennifer Worth’s best-selling memoirs.

The 63-year-old star plays Sister Evangelina in the primetime series, alongside a star-studded cast including hotly tipped newcomer Jessica Raine, comedian Miranda Hart and Jenny Agutter. 

‘I hadn’t read Call the Midwife when I was sent the script,’ she says. ‘But about two days before, by coincidence, a friend said that I must read it. She had just finished it and said I should get it out of the library, she was so moved by it.’

But, after her audition to play the blunt sister from a tough background, Pam picked up the book and was enthralled. ‘I was just hooked,’ she enthuses. ‘There was a lot of political stuff that came up that amazed me.

‘I don’t think the word “feminism” has much meaning anymore but it was a shock how recently things have changed and it’s incredible just how much ground we have made in such a short period of time. I’d love young women to see how bad it was then, so they wouldn’t throw away their possibilities and chances now.’

Worth’s intimate depiction of midwifery in 1950s East London is colourful, moving and uplifting but, in equal measures, squalid, painful and miserable. With television’s often-sanitised primetime adaptations, can the essence and heart of her memoirs be captured for the small screen?

‘When a book is adapted to a series, events are inevitably squashed together and it will seem more eventful than it is,’ Pam says. ‘But I think we may have actually pulled a punch or two; there’s some stuff in her writing that’s just so hard hitting – extreme abject poverty and hunger that you just can’t get across on screen.’

But a bid for period popularity, riding to success on the generous Edwardian coattails of Downton Abbey, this is not. ‘It isn’t a period drama,’ Pam insists. ‘This is recent history. It’s just recent history that we’ve just forgotten about. I don’t think it’s a period piece, the costumes are fantastic, but it’s just not that kind of a series at all. It’s like nothing else that’s ever been on television. I was surprised that they were going to do this, but the drama is pretty fantastic.’

While it may be set in Pam’s childhood years, as a woman who has never had children, did she face a challenge in helping bring the events to life for the camera? ‘We had a fantastic woman on set who was our midwife advisor to help. I learnt a lot and if anybody wants to deliver a plastic baby then I’m the perfect person,’ she laughs.

‘Some of the birth scenes were incredible – we were so convinced sometimes by the shot that we got caught up in the excitement of it all. We became pretty expert in all the movements and procedures of how birth worked at that time, but it’s not much like modern childbirth.’

While technology, conditions and education mean childbirth has moved on considerably since the period Worth was documenting, the essence remains the same, and Pam has a lot of respect for midwives 60 years on.

‘As a job, it must just lift the heart out of your chest every time,’ she says. ‘There’s the anxious anticipation before the birth, then the joy when a healthy baby is born. I’ve got huge admiration for midwives – they are coping with one of the most powerful, important things in the world.’

Worth gave her full approval for the series and worked closely with the screenwriter Heidi Thomas, whose previous credits include Upstairs Downstairs and Cranford. But, tragically, while she helped guide the project, she didn’t get to see the fruits of her labour, as she died of cancer at the age of 75, before filming began.

‘She died about three days before we did our first read through,’ sighs Pam. ‘I was really looking forward to meeting her because I think her life history is just so incredible and amazing. I was looking forward to asking her about the character I was playing, who I was just so knocked out by.

‘I can only hope that she would like it if she were alive,’ continues Pam. ‘Her family came on set and they were fascinated to see her book come to life and we hope that we’ve done it justice. It was very touching that they were there.’

While Worth isn’t alive to see her book beamed into the homes of millions, hopefully the series will bring her touching and profound writing to a new audience and her legacy will continue to provide insight, laughter and tears long after her tragic death. 



Call the Midwife runs for six episodes on BBC1 at 8pm on Sundays.