Welcome to 1970. In Call the Midwife Season 14, the groovy opener (airing March 30 on PBS) comes into the decade strong with storylines involving teenage pregnancy, political strikes, and more drama for the East London community of Poplar. Jenny Agutter, who has played Sister Julienne since the start, says that creator Heidi Thomas‘ Dickensian-style storytelling has created “quite a strong story” in the first installment, with a teen pregnancy that is handled in a way that only Midwife can.
She’s referring to the plight of a 14-year-old with child who “becomes a problem for Dr. Turner [Stephen McGann] and the nurse,” teases Agutter, because her deeply religious family believes it’s an immaculate conception. “They try to get the girl to denounce the devil,” she adds. “It’s scary stuff.”
Meanwhile, Sister Julienne and her longtime colleague Trixie (Helen George) are fighting back against a Board of Health that wants the state in control of the district’s healthcare. But as workers strikes and a building explosion caused by lack of regulatory checks later this season show, the state often fails the people, making the midwives’ grassroots aid vital. They really do have a higher calling!
Agutter also promises that burning questions from the Call the Midwife 2024 Christmas special will be answered in the premiere. It “is a conclusion” to all the loose strings. Overall, Season 14 is, in a word, about “poverty,” says the star. “Poverty and all the social issues that come out of it, the abuse that might happen, the difficulties.”
“It seemed like the ’60s brought a lot of growth and optimism,” Agutter explains. “And you’ve had a Christmas episode, which is actually half of a story. So it must be rather tantalizing for people because it doesn’t actually complete at all until you get into March, and you see that second half. And as I say, it being a completion of a Christmas episode, really it has the sense of joy of people getting together and enjoying a period of time together with family and making that family work in a community.”
“But it also shows the beginnings of what one’s feeling in 1970, which is the problems that come out of expecting more from might’ve been offered and what actually is on offer,” she continues. “We have strikes, people unhappy about what they’ve got. As far as Julienne’s concerned, the [Board of Health] really want Nonnatus House out of the game, so their sense of control there is being diminished. But they serve the community, and oftentimes when you hand over to state to take care of everything, it doesn’t actually take care of all those things.”
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That’s where the explosion later this season comes in. It’s brought about by the fact that “there haven’t been enough checks on the building” with the state managing housing regulations, Agutter shares. “It’s a very poor tenement building and fortunately there are no injuries, but it’s a sign of something falling apart, going wrong,” she says.
Homelessness and racism are also prevalent in Poplar in Season 14. “We’ve got an extremely good nurse who’s from Trinidad who’s joined us, and someone that Sister Julienne is very proud to have as part of her team,” Agutter reveals. Julienne is later shocked to learn that a patient throws out false accusations about this nurse alleging negligent medical care. Agutter says “it purely comes because she doesn’t like being touched by this person.”
“There’s also issues like spina bifida that comes up, the difficulties that sometimes come with we’re getting less home births, more births in the hospital, and then people being dismissed from hospital early and not being followed up,” Agutter adds.
Adding to those troubles is Nonnatus House’s increasingly diminished power to handle things themselves, aka state control places time-consuming roadblocks to their solutions.
“It’s one of those issues as to, if you don’t have the authority to do something yourself and you’ve got to run by the guidelines, it’s like what happens with education and all the rest of it,” Agutter shares. “Things become very difficult to do because you are being monitored all the time for what you can and can’t do. And then you can’t run things efficiently in your own way.”
Run-ins with the local council will be impossible, as Nonnatus now own their building, so they have the issues of having to take care of that building as well. They go to the council for help that, but they’re not particularly wanting to help with that.” Sister Julienne will spend much of this season figuring out “how to continue” the good work of Nonnatus House, “how to keep it going and what they can do” now that the government is stepping in so strongly.
Times certainly are changing in Poplar. From the set design to the fashion of the times, everything is going to look different. But as Agutter says with a laugh, “Unfortunately, the habits stay the same.”
Call the Midwife, Season 14 Premiere, Sunday, March 30, 8/7c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)
