VIEWING GUIDE
What to watch this week: Call The Midwife, Vera and more
Your ultimate guide to TV and radio entertainment, chosen by our expert critics
The cast of Call The Midwife
ANDREA SOUTHAM/NEAL STREET PRODUCTIONS/BBC
The Sunday Times
Call The Midwife (Today, BBC1, 8pm)
It’s not even fashionable to be cynical about this enduring show any more: best just to settle into the 13th series, comfortable in the knowledge that at some point you will probably end up in tears. It’s Easter 1969 and there’s a kind of rebirth at Nonnatus House, as a new pupil midwife-training scheme brings in a fresh influx of characters, among them high-achieving Trinidadian nurse Joyce Highland (Renee Bailey) and Rosalind Clifford (Natalie Quarry), a cricket fan raised in a boys’ boarding school. As ever, there’s a noble effort to dig into changing social attitudes, with Stephen McGann’s Dr Turner and Jenny Agutter’s Sister Julienne involved in the delivery of a baby to a mother with cerebral palsy
