<Tr> <Th_colspan="2"> External links </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Website </Td> </Tr> <P> Call the Midwife is a BBC period drama series about a group of nurse midwives working in the East End of London in the late 1950s and early 1960s . It stars Jessica Raine, Miranda Hart, Helen George, Bryony Hannah, Laura Main, Jenny Agutter, Pam Ferris, Judy Parfitt, Cliff Parisi, Stephen McGann, Ben Caplan, Emerald Fennell, Victoria Yeates, Linda Bassett and Charlotte Ritchie . The series is produced by Neal Street Productions, a production company founded and owned by the film director and producer Sam Mendes, Call the Midwife executive producer Pippa Harris, and Caro Newling . The first series, set in 1957, premiered in the UK on 15 January 2012 . </P> <P> The series was created by Heidi Thomas, originally based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth who worked with the Community of St. John the Divine, an Anglican religious order, at their convent in the East End in London . The order was founded as a nursing order in 1849 . The memoirs have since been expanded to include new, historically sourced material . For the most part it depicts the day - to - day lives of the midwives and those in their local neighbourhood of Poplar, with certain historical events of the era having a direct or indirect effect on the characters and storylines . Such events include: the knock - on effects of the post-World War II baby boom, post-war immigration and the 1948 founding of the NHS in the first series and beyond; the introduction of gas and air as a form of pain relief and unexploded ordnance in the second series; the Child Migrants Programme and the threat of nuclear warfare (including emergency response guidelines issued by local Civil Defence Corps) in the fourth series; and the thalidomide scandal and the introduction of the contraceptive pill in the fifth series . </P>

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