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TV & Satellite Week

December 19 - 26, 2020

Roll up, roll up… the nuns and midwives celebrate Christmas and the circus comes to town

When the first lockdown was announced back in March, panic ran through the Call the Midwife production team as filming was just about to start on the Christmas special.

But, after shooting finally resumed in August, the cast and crew were determined to ensure that the annual festive installment would still take its rightful place at the center of the Christmas Day schedule.

‘I’m so proud of what everyone has managed to pull off this year. It’s been an all-out effort,’ says Jenny Agutter, who plays Nonnatus House’s steadfast head nun Sister Julienne, when TV&Satellite Week catches up with the cast via video chat. ‘We are doing a proper, full, lovely Christmas special.’

COVID PRECAUTIONS

Not that it was an easy thing to pull off. A designated COVID-19 supervisor oversaw all the preventative measures onset, such as mask-wearing where possible and social distancing, while prosthetic babies were often used in the birth scenes. When real-life babies were needed, their own mothers stood in for the nuns and midwives on screen to hold them.