'Call the Midwife' Enters a New Decade in the Season 14 Premiere

It's a new decade on Call the Midwife, and with that comes new issues. We rejoin the nuns of Nonnatus House and the midwives in the spring of 1970, only a few short months after the events of the double Christmas episode. Trixie (Helen George) is back in Poplar to keep her midwife license current and help Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter) battle the Board of Health to fund Nonnatus House. 

Meanwhile, protests on the Isle of Dogs, labor strikes, and emerging diseases keep the nuns and nurses busy. The women and Doctor Turner (Stephen McGann) have their work cut out. It's not all bleak news, though. Rosalind (Natalie Quarry) is finding her feet in Poplar and took up volunteering at the homeless shelter with Cyril (Zephryn Taitte). Nancy (Megan Cusack) is still going strong with Roger (Connor O'Donnell). The two are making moves after Nancy was offered a new job that would allow them to start a new chapter together and give Collette (Francesca Fullilove) better schooling. After a battle of wills with Roger's mother, the two are engaged and ready to start a life together. Nancy will be moving on, but we have a wedding to plan before we have to officially say goodbye. 

The wedding news was a great reprieve after Doctor Turner and the nurses had to care for a young teenager whose parents believed she got pregnant by immaculate conception, and the Isle of Dogs protests put Rosalind's patient of the week in grave danger. 

Call the Midwife is no stranger to teen pregnancies, but the Season 14 premiere brought us one of the youngest mothers yet. Mrs. Buckle (Annabelle Apsion) finds Paula Cunningham (Kitty Anderson), one of the store's paper girls, throwing up outside the store and urging her mother to take Paula to see a doctor. When Dr. Turner concludes that Paula is pregnant after her examination, but Paula has no idea how babies are made. Her stringent and religious parents didn't allow her to attend sex education the previous term. 

They are so convinced that their 13-year-old daughter has no idea how to have sex that they believe she must be pregnant by immaculate conception. When Paula admits that she doesn't believe in God, the parents switch to believing she's been impregnated by the devil and try to exorcise her. Luckily, her father realizes he's torturing his little girl and helps her escape. Little Paula makes it to Nonnatus House, where she confesses that she and one of the other paper boys did mess around, but she really had no idea what they were doing. So, that sex education really would have helped! 

The shame of having a 13-year-old pregnant daughter is too much for Paula's mother to take, though, and she's disowned. The nuns and Dr. Turner arrange for Paula to stay at a home for wayward girls. She'll be able to continue her pregnancy and give birth there, and then return home once the baby is given up for adoption. It wasn't the best-case scenario for Paula, but it was much safer than allowing her to stay home. Her parents at least came to see her off before she left for the home. 

Across Poplar, the Isle of Dogs protests for better services and representation put a real wrench in the works for Rosalind and Nurse Crane (Linda Bassett), who were attending to a nervous mother due to give birth to her second baby. Winnie (Maggie Musgrove) had an emergency C-section while delivering her first baby, and the hospital doctors decided it would be safest to go that route for the second baby. Winnie is less sure because she remembers the pain of the first surgery all too well. 

It turns out that no one really has a chance to decide because Winnie goes into labor at home. Rosalind and Nurse Crane manage to make it to the Isle, but the protestors make it too difficult for an ambulance to get across the bridge so Winnie is forced to have the baby at home. She's terrified of a uterine tear, but Rosalind takes control of the situation and gets both Winnie and the baby through the trying birth. 

The baby girl is born vaginally and is completely healthy. It's a stressful birth, but Winnie doesn't have to go through weeks of recovery for intense abdominal surgery and the doctors are glad to be wrong. 

It was hinted in the Christmas special that the Board of Health wasn't keen on keeping the nuns of Nonnatus House around, and that remains true in the Season 14 premiere. It will be an ongoing storyline for the season as Sister Julienne prepares for battle to save the house and continue the nuns' good work in the community. 

She's not alone, though! She has Lady Aylwood at her side. The idea is that Trixie not being a nun, will be better able to argue in favor of the secular services that Nonnatus House provides and hopefully avoid the religious bias from the board. When have we ever known Trixie to back down from a fight? Surely, she and Sister Julienne can figure out a way to allow Nonnatus House to fight another day. 

Call the Midwife Season 14 continues Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on most PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. The series has already been streaming as an early weekly release on PBS Passport for members since Friday, February 28, 2025, and will stream the finale in mid-April. The series will stream on the PBS app and the PBS Masterpiece Channel weekly through mid-May. As always, check your local listings.