BBC Call the Midwife reveals heartbreaking family inspiration for show storyline: ‘I learnt a lot about my life’
BBC Call the Midwife creator and writer Heidi Thomas has shared the extremely personal influences she has weaved into the long-running show.
The beloved programme, now set in 1970, has returned to screens for series 14.
Call the Midwife debuted in 2012, following a gaggle of East London nurses in the late 1950s.
A new series has been broadcast annually along with additional Christmas specials.
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Thomas first started writing the show in 2009 and has scarcely stopped since.
While speaking with Radio Times, she revealed each series script takes 14 months to complete meaning she has to overlap beginning a new series while completing the previous.
This schedule also means she has almost no time for breaks, as she explained: “I take the tree down on Twelfth Night and start writing the next Christmas special.”
With such a relentless pace of work, one might expect Thomas to be burnt out, but she quickly swatted away suggestions of that character.
The writer explained the show’s value was that viewers could: “Either see themselves reflected back, or they find out something they didn’t know about how society works.”
However, while writing the story of the Mulluck family in series five, she found herself engaging in some tender introspection.
“I learnt an awful lot about my own life – and my own family – by working on stories set in that time period,” she explained.
In the fifth series, the Mulluck’s new baby Susan was born with a congenital disorder and other disabilities that doctors would later determine were caused by the drug Thalidomide.
As she crafted the plot, Thomas quickly realised she was writing the story of her own family.
Thomas revealed that her beloved late brother David was born with Down’s Sydrome.
She explained that it became apparent to her that the struggles of her mother to get him the care he needed had been translated into the story of the Mullucks.
Later, the show introduced the character Reggie (played by Daniel Laurie), who has Down’s syndrome – taking direct inspiration from her brother who tragically died at the age of 15.
Her exploration of these topics—drawing on her own experience with the actors—helped illuminate both the changes in attitudes to disability and the areas where attitudes remained the same. “That was quite a profound moment for me, a big learning thing, both as a human being and as a dramatist,” Thomas explained.