Call The Midwife season 8 to feature first intersex character as show breaks new territory
Season eight of the award-winning period drama is set to tackle subjects including inter-sexuality and backstreet abortion
BBC One’s Call The Midwife recently returned with a brand new season that’s set to tackle a range of thought-provoking topics.
The drama, originally set in the 1950s, will approach issues such as gender identity, illegal abortions, cervical smears and prostate exams.
The touching drama has never shied away from addressing difficult subjects and writer Heidi Thomas seems set to continue this in the eighth series.
Speaking to the , she revealed a young woman will discover she has male genitalia and is intersex.
After finally plucking up the courage to tell the nurses she’s never had a period, the woman is devastated to learn she will never bear children and her shocked fiance has no idea what to do.
Heidi explained: “A young woman discovers on the eve of her marriage that she has what doctors then called ‘Testicular Feminisation Syndrome’. That isn’t just a medical story it’s a question of identity.”
While abortions were legalised in Britain in 1967, this new series is still three years away from that life-altering change in law.
Backstreet terminations will be tackled several times in the upcoming season as women in London’s East End had few choices when it came to unwanted pregnancies.
The storyline will feature in four of the eight episodes and Nurse Valerie Dyer, played by Jennifer Kirby, will be particularly affected by the horrors she witnesses.
Speaking to the Mirror, Jennifer said: “Valerie obviously takes it to heart because that community is where she’s from, it’s where she’s always lived so she feels it very personally that women are having to go to this level.”
Actress Helen George, who plays Trixie, added: “The abortion issue is a thread throughout the series and it’s really wonderful, but quite tough.”
Series eight will also show the start of when cervical screening was introduced.
Former Call the Midwife star Jessica Raine, 37, confirmed she is expecting her first child with husband Tom Goodman-Hill, 50.
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