I’d love to have heard the elevator pitch for the BBC series Call the Midwife. “It’s a mid-20th century Downton Abbey with poor people and nuns.” “It’s Upstairs, Downstairs with afterbirth.” “It’s an all-female MASH on bicycles.” Really, who would sit down for an hour’s relaxation and turn on a drama of nonstop labor pains? The blood, the screaming, the ewww….

Having been the person who conveniently got sick for every high school biology dissection and barely made it through the obligatory birth film in prenatal class, I was sure this was one high-quality public television series that I could happily skip.

I was wrong.

Somehow while flipping channels I managed to catch the closing scenes of the Season One finale. Although I knew absolutely nothing about the show besides the title, I was immediately drawn in to what was obviously a well-told love story involving Chummy, a large, awkward woman, and a police officer in her neighborhood. Maybe there was more to this series after all…

Call the Midwife , based upon the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, tells the story of a group of young National Health Service midwives working in the low-income East End of London in the 1950s. Based in a nunnery, the young women run a clinic and travel by bicycle to deliver babies at home to the residents of the area, where a baby boom is in progress. For the midwives, there’s a big adjustment to be made to the living conditions of their working class patients, as well as to the nuns who oversee their work.

Although they’re not in a war zone, some of the midwives seem to have taken the job for the adventure of working under extreme conditions. Others, like main character Jenny Lee, may be trying to run away, Foreign Legion-style. The mothers they serve are all feisty and resourceful. The nuns they live among are all colorful characters — particularly canny old Sister Monica Joan, who sneaks pieces of cake no matter how well hidden, speaks in ambiguous classical quotes, and may be either suffering from dementia or else just “deliberately eccentric.”  There’s a lot of dry British humor in Call the Midwife that keeps it from being too sappy or downbeat, but a lot of heartwrenching moments as well.

There’s also a lot of interesting technical details about home deliveries (and yes, a lot of panting and slimy babies as well). When I was pregnant, midwives in my state were still fighting for the right to attend home births (although it was not illegal, they required a doctor on hand to supervise them). Those who attended home births on their own did so “underground” and for parents, finding midwife who did them was a word-of-mouth process. Although I considered a home birth myself, I decided for several reasons to deliver in a hospital, but a home birth midwife was my doula. Still, the idea always fascinated me; I had read about the home birth system in England, so getting to see how it actually worked in its early days was fascinating. Bloody afterbirth and all.

All in all, the six-episode first season of Call the Midwife is a delight, for all BBC fans. It’s available on DVD and Blu-ray on Amazon.

Bonus! PBS will be showing a Call the Midwife Holiday Special on December 30. That gives you plenty of time to watch Season One on disc and then tune in! And be sure to watch for the return of Season Two in March 2013.

Watch Holiday Special – Preview on PBS. See more from Call the Midwife.