Delayed filming on the 10th series of Call the Midwife is proving a chilly experience as the cast tackle
summer scenes in freezing mid-winter – all at a safe social distance.
Working five months later than planned after restrictions held up the schedule last year, they are having to ignore freezing temperatures in shots that take longer as compliance with strict coronavirus rules is ensured.
Filming has been taking place in the chilly community centre where the nuns and nurses of Nonnatus House operate their weekly clinic.
Star Stephen McGann, 57, who plays GP Dr Turner, said: “We’ve never filmed in January before, and we’re in this huge cold place. Added to that, the trailers are cold, the set is cold.”
Telling how lockdown is affecting filming, he said: “Acting is a contact sport. The poor old Covid supervisor goes, ‘You can’t stand there, you can’t touch them, you’ve got to be here, you’re not allowed to go near here.’
“And so you have to reconstruct the whole scene. Then our first assistant said, ‘Oh, by the way – it’s the middle of summer so you’re all really happy’.”
Stephen’s wife Heidi Thomas, 58, the show’s creator and writer, said she wept tears of joy when she saw the Christmas special, also filmed under restrictions.
She told the How To Academy: “I had a profoundly moving moment when I saw the first cut of it. I actually cried because I could barely see what the crew put themselves through just to produce it. I think the best work in television is often invisible work. I really did think it was miraculous.”
The BBC1 series, to air around May, is set in 1966 and is likely to feature the England World Cup win.
Series 11 will be filmed in summer, for broadcast in the usual slot next January.
