How many seasons of Call the Midwife are there?

Call the Midwife has aired 15 seasons so far.

How many episodes of Call the Midwife are there?

There are 117 episodes of Call the Midwife across 15 seasons.

Who created Call the Midwife?

Call the Midwife was created by Heidi Thomas.

Where can I watch Call the Midwife?

Call the Midwife is available to stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads, Thirteen, Amazon Video, Google Play Movies and Fandango At Home.

What is Call the Midwife's IMDb rating?

Call the Midwife holds an IMDb rating of 8.6/10 from 35,042 votes.

Drama

When Does Call the Midwife Season 16 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

Name: Call the Midwife
Genre: Drama
Rating: 8.6

“In 1950's London, they delivered hope for all.”

Call the Midwife Season 16 doesn't have an official release date yet. Based on the roughly 12-month gap between previous seasons, expect it around January 2027.

IMDb

8.6/10

Seasons

Episodes

117

Diagnostics

Network: BBC One
Genres: Drama
First aired: 2012-01-15
Last aired: 2026-03-08
Runtime: 52 min
Rated: TV-PG

Awards Won 2 BAFTA 23 wins & 27 nominations total

Predictive Logic Analysis

The clearest signal here is the BBC's public pushback against cancellation rumours in June 2025. Broadcasters rarely issue statements of that kind unless they want to protect a property they still value. That doesn't confirm a Season 16 greenlight, but it's a meaningful gesture from a network that tends to be quiet about its slate until deals are done. At 15 seasons and 117 episodes, Call the Midwife is an institution for BBC One, and long-running returning series at the BBC typically get formal ending announcements well in advance rather than quiet cancellations.

The show's performance data is mixed but not alarming. The IMDb rating of 8.6 across 35,000 votes is strong for a drama of this age. Season 15 episode ratings averaging 6.5 are actually up from the prior season's 4.9, which is a positive trajectory despite the within-season fall. Trakt active watchers are steady at nearly 15,000, which is solid for a BBC drama that also airs on PBS and streams to Netflix in the US. Wikipedia pageview trend is falling, but that's a mild and common signal for a long-running show between seasons. The multi-platform distribution, including PBS Masterpiece and Netflix US, gives the BBC a co-financing and licensing argument that most domestic dramas don't have.

What is Call the Midwife about?

Call the Midwife has been running since 2012 and has quietly become one of the BBC's most durable dramas, which is itself a kind of argument for what it does well. Set in the East End of London from the late 1950s onward, it follows a community of midwives and nuns whose working days consist almost entirely of birth, illness, poverty, and the particular intimacies that come with home deliveries in cramped terraced houses. The show is based on Jennifer Worth's memoirs, and Vanessa Redgrave narrates as the older Worth, lending each episode a retrospective warmth that softens but never entirely removes the harder edges.

The tone is openly sentimental, and there is no point pretending otherwise. Heidi Thomas writes scripts that are designed to make you cry, and they usually succeed, sometimes a little too efficiently. But the show earns more than it manipulates. It takes the physical realities of working-class women's lives, their bodies, their limited choices, their dependence on neighbors and institutions, seriously in a way that a lot of British period drama does not. The nuns are not comic relief or moral obstacles. The community is not romanticized as cheerfully resilient without cost.

Critics have generally received it with the kind of affection reserved for something reliable and good-hearted, and audiences have been more enthusiastic still. An 8.6 on IMDb across tens of thousands of votes after fifteen seasons suggests genuine loyalty rather than nostalgia for a show people half-remember. Helen George and Jenny Agutter have anchored the later seasons as the original ensemble shifted, and the show has continued to use its advancing timeline to address later decades of social change including early NHS tensions, thalidomide, and changing attitudes toward unmarried mothers.

What keeps it honest, finally, is the babies. Each episode involves at least one real delivery, sometimes complicated, sometimes tragic, and the show refuses to make that routine. Even in its most formula-dependent moments, there is something grounding about the fact that new life is always the immediate subject.

Created by Heidi Thomas

Themes

london, englandnursenunbased on novel or bookmidwifehospitaldoctorperiod drama historicalnostalgic

Is Call the Midwife renewed or cancelled?

Working toward renewal

high

BBC publicly denied cancellation reports, signalling continued investment in the show

Source

high

15 seasons aired with no formal ending announcement; BBC typically signals planned endings in advance

medium

Strong IMDb rating of 8.6 from 35,000+ votes for a show in its 15th season

medium

Season 15 episode ratings average up from prior season (6.5 vs 4.9), though trending down within the season

medium

Multi-platform distribution via PBS Masterpiece and Netflix US provides co-financing leverage

Source

low

Trakt active watchers steady at ~15,000, reasonable for a BBC drama

low

2 BAFTA wins and 23 total wins across awards history; strong critical reputation

Working against it

high

Cancellation reports circulated in UK press in mid-2025, suggesting real uncertainty exists

Source

medium

No official renewal announcement made despite Season 15 having aired

low

Wikipedia pageview trend falling, suggesting cooling between-season interest

Call the Midwife Season 16 Release Date

If a Season 16 is commissioned, the BBC's typical production timeline for Call the Midwife would put a Christmas special in late 2026 and a main series run in early 2027. The show has followed this Christmas-then-spring pattern consistently for years. A formal renewal announcement, if it comes, would likely arrive in the second half of 2026 once production is locked in. There's no confirmed next-episode date right now, so any timing estimate beyond that pattern is speculative.