Louise
Ironside is a writer of substance. This was more than evident in the episode of
Call the Midwife penned by the Edinburgh-born playwright and former actress,
and screened two Sundays ago as part of the latest series of BBC One’s hit TV
drama. This wasn’t just for the content of Ironside’s episode of the 1960s-set
look at life in and around an east London hospital run by nuns. It was also
about what happened following its broadcast.
First
of all, Labour MP David Lammy tweeted how the episode ‘has got me in pieces’,
singling out a remarkable performance by Annette Crosbie as a former
suffragette. Then came the news that the head of blood donation campaigns for
the NHS had been in touch with the programme’s makers to let them know that
within a day of it being shown, the programme had prompted a 46% increase in
people in the UK registering as donors.
This
wasn’t the result of some Brechtian polemic. Call the Midwife is a prime time
mainstream drama watched weekly by upwards of seven million viewers. This may
be why the programme has been hailed in some quarters as the most subversive
drama on television, and it is partly this sleight of hand that gives the show
its power.
Within
the first five minutes of Ironside’s episode, it touched on immigration,
citizenship and the Windrush generation. There were nods as well to everyday
racism, working class poverty and notions of patriarchy, women’s rights and
community, with participation in local politics to the fore. This was all
before the soundtrack’s sweeping strings eased us into the episode’s two main
plots. The first was about a Ghanaian family coming to terms with being
diagnosed with sickle cell anaemia. The second focused on Crosbie’s ageing
suffragette’s struggle to retain her personal independence.
All
of which is a remarkable testament to the the programme’s main writer and
co-producer Heidi Thomas, who has drawn inspiration from the memoirs of real
life midwife Jennifer Worth. Ironside’s episode, directed beautifully by Kate
Saxon, seems to have hit a particular nerve.
“It’s
been amazing,” says Ironside of the response. “The programme’s got such a
massive audience that it always makes a bit of a splash, and that’s to do with a
combination of the story, and the way it feeds into the current political
situation. There’s also the absolutely amazing performances by the guest cast.
The actors who played the family were just brilliant, and Annette Crosbie is a
legend. She blew me away in the read-through, and she did it again onscreen.
The layers she added to the script were incredible.”
Such
emotional empathy isn’t an unusual occurrence.
“It
does this week after week,” says Ironside. “It’s a genuine phenomenon. There
are so many elements that make the show a success. It’s got working women at
its centre, and whether it’s the sisters or the nurses, there’s no bloke telling
them what to do. Stephen McGann’s character Dr Turner might think he’s in
charge every so often, but I think he knows his place. The women are running
the shop, and that’s great to see. Then you’ve got the birth stories, which
catch people at a vulnerable moment in their lives, and I think it’s quite
cathartic for people watching them going through it.”
With several other episodes penned by Scottish writers Carolyn Bonnyman and Andrea Gibb, as Ironside points out, Call the Midwife is essentially about community.
“It
feels very now,” she says. “It’s about a community that’s changing, and
people’s fears and uncertainty about that. You’re not clobbering people over
the head, but Heidi is very clear about the stories she wants to tell, and sets
them up beautifully.”
Ironside’s
first episode on the programme involved a plot about female genital mutilation.
“With
such a big audience, you want to get it right,” she says. “We don’t want the
characters walking round with an issue pasted on their back. It’s really
important that they’re real people, and that it’s done with integrity, and with
love.”
This
isn’t the first time Ironside’s writing has caused a stir. As well as penning
episodes of Waterloo Road, Shetland, Law and Order and Lip Service, over the
last decade she has written extensively for BBC Scotland soap, River City. In
2016, she won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s Best Long Running TV series
award for an episode involving the eating disorder of main character, Bob, played
by Tom Urie. With long-running TV institutions Emmerdale and Holby City also
nominated, Ironside and River City’s victory was doubly sweet.
“Just
being nominated was amazing enough, but I owe everything to River City. They
took me on when I had no experience of writing for TV, and to see it up against
those other shows was brilliant.”
Much
of Ironside’s melding of popular drama and social issues dates back to her
early theatre work on shows such as Risk, about vulnerable young people,
produced by The Grassmarket Project, and Trade, about sex workers in Edinburgh,
presented by the Oxygen House company in the early 1990s. Both were directed by
the lunchtime theatre company’s co-founder John Mitchell, with whom Ironside
worked extensively at what was then the Netherbow Theatre, now the Scottish
Storytelling Centre.
“Writing
those plays were really similar to writing TV episodes,” Ironside reflects, “doing
all this research and working with people. I love that, taking four or five
really random things and seeing how they can work together. It really suits my
brain.”
Ironside
worked with Mitchell again at Lung Ha’s Theatre Co, writing shows including The
Little Lady from the Lucky Star and The Homemade Child. For the now long-closed
Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh, Ironside wrote Gloria Goodheart & The
Glitter Grab Gang and The Skelpin’ Wean.
It
was at Theatre Workshop where Ironside was first exposed to knitting together
multiple narratives when she took part in the Stockbridge-based venue’s annual
large-scale community plays.
As an
actress, Ironside went on to appear in several productions at the Royal Lyceum
Theatre. She also appeared at the Traverse Theatre in Rona Munro’s early play,
Your Turn to Clean the Stair, and in David Greig’s first main-stage play,
Europe. She even did a stint in Channel 4’s Scouse soap, Brookside.
“What
I love about acting is rehearsal,” she says, “researching it and trying things
five different ways, which in a way is sort of what I’m doing now without
having to get up and do it.”
Ironside
went on to become playwright in residence with the Traverse, though the play
she was commissioned to write during that time, Seven Miles from Fortune City,
fell between the cracks of changes in the theatre’s artistic directorship, and
remains unproduced.
“I’ve
got a lot of telly work out of that,” she says. “It’s out of date now, but I
still use it as a spec script for TV work.”
With
several TV projects in the pipeline, a return to the stage seems unlikely, though
neither is it something Ironside is ruling out.
“I’d
love to do something for theatre again,” she says. “Getting all this response
for Call the Midwife is great, but it’s really strange, because I can sit down
and watch it with mum, and not get any sense of anyone else. But doing theatre,
and being in a room full of people responding, you can’t beat it.”
Call
the Midwife is currently running on BBC One on Sunday nights at 8pm. Episode
Two of the current series, written by Louise Ironside, can be watched on BBC
iPlayer for the next two months.
The Herald, January 29th 2019
ends
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