So we come to an end of the second successful series of Call the Midwife which to me has been a lot darker than its predecessor. We’ve seen domestic violence, backstreet abortion and disabled children while the lack of Miranda Hart’s Chummy has meant a cutback on comedy subplots. Though Chummy returned last week her scenes were kept to a minimum but we knew that her pregnancy would take centre stage in this final episode.

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The one thing I have enjoyed about this series of Call the Midwife is that it has had a much more serious tone thanks in part to the absence of Miranda Hart as Chummy whose comic interludes never really did anything for me. Knowing that the character would return this week filled me with trepidation as I thought this episode would suffer as a result thankfully though Hart’s appearances were kept to a minimum allowing the other stories to thrive.

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Call The Midwife star, Miranda Hart, has revealed that she is thoroughly thrilled that her character, Chummy Cholmodeley-Browne – now Mrs Noakes, is expecting a baby on the hit BBC drama.

As we reported earlier this week how, when Chummy and her new husband PC Noakes (Ben Caplin) return from missionary work this weekend, the larger than life midwife will be sporting a baby bump of her own.

This surprise storyline was meant to have been kept under-wraps but Miranda, who is also the star of her own comedy show Miranda, was so excited she has found it hard to keep the details to herself.
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Miranda Hart will soon be making her way back to hit BBC One drama Call The Midwife, it has been confirmed.

Posh but funny Chummy has supposedly been absent from the hospital for a number of episodes, because she accompanied her policeman husband Peter on a working trip to to Sierra Leone.

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As we reported earlier this year, following the tragic death of Matthew Crawley during last year’s Christmas special of the popular ITV period drama, Downton Abbey, producers are currently on the hunt to find a new love interest for his widow, Lady Mary, and it seems that they might have set their sights on Miranda star, Tom Ellis!

Fans of Downton watched in horror on Christmas Day when Matthew (Dan Stevens) met his maker by crashing his car moments after meeting his first born son and heir.

The decision to kill of Matthew was out of the writer’s hands after Dan Stevens, who played Matthew, decided not to renew his contract at the end of series 3. Given the time the show is set, and nature of Matthew’s family, death really was the only answer, but it still left a bitter taste in viewer’s mouths.
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The hit BBC period drama, Call The Midwife, has been recommissioned for a third series, despite the fact that there are not enough of Jennifer Worth’s original stories to fill it!

Call The Midwife, which has just begun airing its second series on BBC, has proved to be one of the Corporation’s biggest dramas since it first aired on our BBC screens last year.
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There’s potentially bad news for fans of Call the Midwife as it’s been reported that Miranda Hart, who of course plays the role of posh medic Chummy, may have to be written out of series four.

That’s because the filming schedule for new series would clash with her upcoming comedy tour in 2014.

A show insider told the Daily Mirror, “She’ll be fine for filming this year but there is a huge question mark hanging over anything beyond that.

“Next year is all about the stand-up tour.” Read more & comment »

Miranda returns to BBC One tonight, for the sixth episode in the latest series and of course it’s full of the usual hilarity.

Fed-up and p*ssed off, the lanky leading lady decides she needs to change the direction her life is going and and tells her friends that she’s giving everything up and going travelling.

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Well it shows how much I know because, despite completely slating it last week, Call the Midwife drew in over 8.5 million viewers for last week’s series debut. Success for the show continued throughout last week as Miranda Hart won Best Actress at the National Television Awards which is a shame seeing as it appears as if she’s leaving the show at least for the rest of the show but more on that later.

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Last year, a programme about midwives in the 1950s was set to air on BBC1 with very little fanfare and with a lead actress in Jessica Raine, that nobody had ever heard of. Somehow, though Call the Midwife went on to become the BBC’s biggest drama hit in years, thanks maybe to the squalid setting of East End London that was miles away from the stuffy stately homes of Downton Abbey, or maybe it was due to the supporting cast of Jenny Agutter, Pam Ferris and Miranda Hart who added some much needed weight to proceedings. Whatever it was, people really took to the programme, and after a thoroughly successful festive special, which was the second most watched programme on Christmas Day after Eastenders, it’s back for a full second series containing all of the elements that made last year’s series such a hit.

At the start of the new episode, we find Raine’s Jenny Lee celebrating a birthday along with her fellow nurses and the nuns in whose house they live and work from. Thankfully the young nurses don’t have to stick around with the nuns all night and glam themselves out for a night on the town, which involves a trip to the cinema to see South Pacific. The fun can’t last for long though as Jenny has to find her ’cause of the week’ who is usually someone who is having an awful time until they meet the lovely nurse who changes things around for them… Read more & comment »

With the 18th National Television Awards only two weeks away all the votes in the public choice categories have been counted and a short list has now been released for you to vote for your favourites!

The National Television Awards is a celebration of the last year on our television sets from soap’s to comedy, drama to factual, and whilst many of the awards are decide by an independent panel, the following 14 awards are left for you, the voting public to decide.
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Hit BBC show Miranda is set to end once the current series finishes.

A massive 10 million people tuned in to watch the first episode of the third series on Boxing Day but the sitcom’s actor Tom Ellis claims creator Miranda Hart no longer wants to work on the programme. Read more & comment »

I think the majority of us were surprised when a programme about a group of 1950s midwives living in a convent became a massive hit in the early part of this year. However Heidi Thomas’ adaptation of Jennifer Worth’s memoirs did just that and Call the Midwife now rightfully receives the Christmas special treatment. The Christmas special recounts Jenny Lee’s first Christmas in Poplar and almost straight away we get a full on birth scene with Sister Julienne finally getting some action and helping Jenny with the birth. After the baby has been successfully delivered Jenny is questioned by an old vagrant lady about how the birth went and if the baby was alright. With Jenny concerned about the lady’s wellbeing she starts doing some research, aided by Sister Evangelina, who discovers that her name is Mrs Jenkins and she is well known to those in the general community. As Jenny digs further she finds that Mrs Jenkins has lived a rough life and had many children while she was at the workhouse however she was separated from all of them. As always seems to be the way with Call the Midwife, Jenny saves another soul by helping Mrs Jenkins get back on her feet and making her see both the doctor and the dentist while her skills as a former seamstress are also put to good use later on.

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In the final show of the current series of Alan Carr Chatty Man, chef supremo Gordon Ramsay tells Alan all about his Christmas TV special – a cook-along-live on Christmas Day.

Sir Ian McKellen talks about reprising his role of Gandalf for the forthcoming film: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and Miranda Hart gives the lowdown on her award-winning series Miranda.

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Tim Vine, star of hit BBC comedy, Not Going Out, has sensationally quit the show, just after execs had commissioned another two series!

Vine, who has played show star Lee Mack’s best pal Tim since the sitcom began in 2006, is the second main character to quit, after comedian Miranda Hart left the show after two series after the 2009 Christmas special.
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