Yay! Call the Midwife Is Getting Three More Series

Ratings-winning drama Call the Midwife is to have three more series that will keep the show on BBC One until 2020. Three Christmas specials have also been commissioned. Yay, yay and yay! A sixth series of the show, about nuns and midwives working in London's East End, has already been announced and will air in early 2017. The drama, created by Heidi Thomas and inspired by the memoirs of former nurse Jennifer Worth, was first shown on BBC One in 2012. A Christmas special, partly set at a missionary hospital in South Africa, will be shown next month. The three new series will take the characters further into the 1960s - a time when Britain, according to the show's creator, was "fizzing with change and challenge." She commented:

"There is so much rich material - medical, social and emotional - to be explored. We have now delivered well over 100 babies on screen, and like those babies the stories keep on coming."

But sad news for fans of Miranda Hart's character 'Chummy' who will not be returning to her role as was previously reported. The comedian and actress said it was "with a heavy heart" that she had to call off her comeback to the series. She said:

"Having shared Chummy's return to CTM, I've not been able to birth (pun) the schedule to make it work"

It had been hoped that Camilla 'Chummy' Noakes would return for the 2016 Christmas special and the sixth series, expected to air in 2017. Hart, who left the show during its fourth series due to work commitments, said she was:

"truly sad not to be playing Chummy this year"

But she said fans were "in for a treat" with the addition of Dame Harriet Walter as a cast member, "and more besides." Hart's character was last seen moving to a mother and baby unit. The comedian received a Bafta nomination in 2012 for her work in the series, which also stars Jenny Agutter, Helen George and Judy Parfitt. Harriet Walter, who you might know as Lady Prudence Shackleton in Downton Abbey, will play a new character called Sister Ursula when the show returns next year. Can't get enough or fed up of nurses on bikes? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.