The Bampton producer of a hit primetime drama tells Stuart Macbeth about its overnight success

Period primetime drama Call the Midwife has won a place in the hearts of UK TV viewers since it made its BBC debut in 2012.

The show follows midwives in London’s East End in the 1950s. The Christmas Special airs on BBC1 on Christmas Day, ahead of a fifth series in 2016.

Which means that yuletide joy, bouncing babies and choirs of angelic children are all on the festive wish list of Dame Pippa Harris, pictured below on set, the 48-year-old Oxfordshire producer of the BBC show.

When we meet under the mistletoe to talk about the show’s fourth annual Christmas special, she promises laughter, tears and plenty of snow.

“You have to have snow in a Christmas special,” she beams. “And this year we even have Fred, our handyman, dressing up as Father Christmas!”

Pippa, who grew up in Eynsham and attended Oxford High School, was made a Dame in August’s honours list. She founded Neal Street Productions with director Sam Mendes in 2003 and Call the Midwife is the company’s best known export. So how does she explain its appeal? “What was odd is that it was an overnight hit,” reflects Pippa, of Bampton. “The very first episode got eight million viewers, which for a new TV show was extraordinary.

“There was something about the combination of medicine, social history, and nurses that appealed to people.”

The show soon pulled in ten million viewers, more than the FA Cup Final, a feat achieved with a cast largely of newcomers “We had a couple of names such as Pam Ferris and Jenny Agutter to draw people in. But almost everyone else was virtually unknown. It’s tough to launch something with an unknown cast, but it does have benefits. An audience will have no preconceptions, and people like new faces.”

Call The Midwife’s writer Heidi Thomas based the first two series on the bestselling memoirs of East End midwife Jennifer Worth, who died of oesophageal cancer aged 75, a year before the series debuted. “There was something TV friendly in the way Jennifer Worth wrote about life. Her memoirs are full of marvellous stories. But by the end of the second series we began to run low on material,” Pippa admits.

So from series three Heidi has collaborated with historical researchers, and drawn inspiration from midwives who worked in the era of the series. The result has been quality drama with hard hitting plots.

“As we go out in a pre-watershed slot on a Sunday there was an expectation that Call The Midwife would be a chocolate boxy melodrama. But from the beginning we’ve dealt with tough subjects, from abortion to stillbirth, and in a future series we tackle Thalidomide which made its mark on the UK in a terrible way at the beginning of the 1960s.”

Pippa adds: “It helps that all the stories and medical issues we touch on are from a period people can remember. Although treatments change, the conditions don’t. The emotional impact of illnesses is very much the same. Families still react to still birth today in the same way that they did in 1963.

“We get a huge post bag from people who say: ‘This really helped me.‘ The letters are one reason we do the show. It proves than you can be funny, entertaining and moving, but also have a message.”

Pippa says the Christmas special is about motherhood and bereavement but is also comedy packed: “The BBC of the day have chosen to televise a carol concert. And they happen to have chosen Poplar, where the show is set. There’s a marvellous cameo from Adrian Scarborough, who audiences might recognise from the film The King’s Speech.

She admits that TV is what she likes most about Christmas, which she will spend at home with her family. “We will enjoy turkey and carols,” she enthuses. “I’m keen on my Christmas wreath and I’m going to enjoy decorating the tree with baubles. I like being able to eat mince pies and not feel guilty.”

WATCH IT
Call The Midwife Christmas Special is on Chirstmas Day at 7.30pm on BBC1