Call the Midwife confronts female genital mutilation in new series 

Call the Midwife is returning for a new series
Call the Midwife is returning for a new series Credit: Neal Street /BBC 

Call The Midwife is to tackle the controversial issue of female genital mutilation, with a storyline set among the East End’s Somali community.

The BBC One drama will take a sympathetic look at the plight of a young woman who has undergone the procedure.

Heidi Thomas, the screenwriter, said she had wanted to include the storyline for some time but had to wait until the drama reached the early 1960s, when “appropriate cultural communities” had settled in east London.

Call the Midwife
The new series of Call the Midwife is in the 1960s Credit: Sophie Mutevelian /BBC

“I thought this would be a fascinating story, as it would be the first time our midwives would have seen this process. It would provide a very interesting crunch point between two cultures and of course it is now a very hot topic, quite rightly,” she told Radio Times.

FGM is illegal in the UK, and nearly 6,000 new cases were recorded in England last year. But Thomas said her show would not make a moral judgment about the practice.

“We are a medical drama, not a moral drama. We are not judging this woman,” she said. “You do have to be careful not to impose a modern mindset on the attitude of either the white characters or the Somalian women in that part of the story.”

Call The Midwife
The new series will tackle difficult issues Credit: Sophie Mutevelian /BBC

Thomas said the new series had to be rewritten after Miranda Hart pulled out.

The actress, 44, who played loveable midwife Camilla "Chummy" Browne, announced last year that she would not return to the period drama despite suggestions from producers that she would.

Thomas said that she had written Hart into the sixth series, which airs later this month, but that she withdrew at "relatively short notice".

"We were thrilled when Miranda approached us, and I storylined the series for her, but at relatively short notice she had to withdraw," she said.

Miranda Hart
Miranda Hart previously appeared in the programme Credit: Jonathan Ford /BBC 

Asked how much notice she was given, Thomas said: "I can't say, but it was short. We were hopeful right up to the end that we could make it work, but we couldn't.

"I just rewrote the series without Miranda in it, which was sad because we would have loved having her in it. She is part of the Call The Midwife family. But (this time) it wasn't meant to be."

Hart, who quit the show during series four because of work commitments, said that she could not return because she could not make the schedule work.

While movies based on other period dramas such as Downton Abbey are said to be in the works, Thomas said she was not interested in a big-screen spin-off, saying: "It has never been discussed."

She said that she had received "expressions of interest from very senior actresses" to appear in the TV drama because of its strong roles for women.

And she added of the secret to the show's success: "Gradual, persistent change. In some long-running shows there is a pressure to keep characters going on and on with new stories, but that does not replicate life. My mantra is, 'We are not a soap. We are a medical drama'."

The new series begins on Sunday.

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