Call the Midwife Season 12 Is Coming in March

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Season 12 of the fan-favorite period drama Call the Midwife is fast approaching. Here's what we know about what lies ahead for Nonnatus House.

When will Season 12 debut?

Call the Midwife's next outing, will hit our screens this March. The new season debuts on March 19, 2023 on PBS at 8 p.m. eastern.

What will season 12 be about?

Speaking to Radio Times in July 2022, Thomas explained, "Series 12, which we’re filming at the moment, is set in 1968. Women’s lives were incredibly different. Abortion had been legalised. Domestic violence was something that was being talked about more openly. The pill had come onto the scene. All of these things were changing women’s experience and shifting the lens through which women, and that’s our regular characters as well as our guest characters, look at the world." She added, "We’re looking at some very strong stories about the way society was changing at that time."

Along with the changing role of women in society, Thomas revealed that the show will also be touching on anti-immigration sentiment in the UK at the time, as well as the return of some issues from seasons past. Longtime fans of the show may remember Rhoda Mullucks (played by actress Liz White), who was prescribed thalidomide during her pregnancy in season 4, and later returned in season 6 to give birth to her daughter, Susan, who suffered birth defects from the substance. In season 12, Rhoda will be expecting another baby, which Thomas says, “puts [the family] under a certain amount of pressure and gives them a lot to worry about."

What else can we expect? "Something rather wonderful happens to Trixie, Lucile has to contend with a reasonable amount of sadness, and what else can I say?" Thomas said. "We have a new nun coming to join the line-up, Sister Veronica."

The Cast

Most of the core cast is confirmed to be returning including Stephen McGann as Dr. Turner, Jenny Agutter as Sister Julienne, and Linda Bassett as Nurse Crane.

Perhaps most exciting for longtime fans of the show, Helen George aka Nurse Trixie will also be returning to the show after a mid-season departure in season 11 for maternity leave.

From the sounds of it, she can expect an exciting season upon her return, as show creator Heidi Thomas teased to the RadioTimes in May 2022 that there's "big news" in the character's future. "Trixie rejoins us," she said. "And something interesting and rather wonderful will happen for Trixie this series, so she has big news coming up—which we probably won't unveil just yet."

Though it hasn't been confirmed yet, one early photo from the season shows Trixie reading from a bridal magazine, giving fans hope that there may yet be a wedding in the cards for the nurse and her beau of the last two seasons, the widower Matthew Aylward (Olly Rix), but for now the show is keeping things under wraps.

The show has been picked up through Season 13.

While things can get dramatic for the fictional midwives of Poplar, their real life fans don't have to be on the edge of their seats about the show's future. In April 2021, even before season 10 aired in the UK, the BBC announced that they had picked up the show not only for the previously announced season 11, but also for seasons 12 and 13. As with the previous seasons, the new entries into the world of the midwives will be made up of 8 hour-long episodes and an annual Christmas Special.

"It’s an incredible privilege to be able to look back on a decade of Call The Midwife, and yet know that our journey is still very far from over," the show's creator Heidi Thomas said at the time. "We are thrilled to be going on for a few more years! Like Nonnatus House itself, we have a proud past but an even more exciting future—full of old favourites, fresh faces, higher hemlines, new ideas. The stories we tell are like babies - they never stop coming, we love them all, and we vow to do our best by every single one."

However, it's not clear what might lie ahead for the show beyond their 13th outing. Laura Main, who plays Shelagh Turner on the show, recently told Radio Times like the cast is just as in-the-dark as the rest of us when it comes to a possible season 14. "We’ve known for a while that thirteen’s commissioned," she said, "but we’re not hearing anything else beyond that." She later added, "We know that maybe it’s getting really quite close to the end now."

Catch up on Call the Midwife

Season 11 of Call the Midwife is currently available to stream through PBS and on Netflix where you can also find the previous 10 seasons. The show is also available for purchase through Amazon Prime.

Read the books that started it all

Did you know that Call the Midwife is inspired by the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, who really served as a midwife in Poplar in the 1950s and '60s? Worth ultimately wrote a trio of books about her work, which Call the Midwife creator Heidi Thomas used to create the beloved show.

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