Call The Midwife: xmas special

BBC First will fast-track the 2014 Call The Midwife Christmas special later this month.

This is a 75 minute special where we finally see Vanessa Redgrave who, until now, has been the unseen narrator.

It is likely to be 12 months before this airs on ABC.

The episode opens in 2005 with Jennifer Worth (Vanessa Redgrave) at home preparing for Christmas with husband Philip. She reminisces about the friends and colleagues of her youth at No‎nnatus House and as she talks, we cut back to 1960.

Rehearsals are underway for the Sunday School Christmas Concert and while Chummy tries to choreograph dancing snowflakes, Trixie sets to work designing a Father Christmas outfit for Fred to wear.

Chummy is enlisted to help run a poorly managed mother and baby home, and with Patsy’s help succeeds in bringing some Christmas joy into the residents lives.

Cynthia is drawn deeply into a case concerning two former residents of a Victorian mental hospital who have been left to fend for themselves and are barely coping. This causes Cynthia to make a life changing decision. There is but one question in all of their hearts, though it goes unspoken – what will 1960 bring?

Starring: Jenny Agutter (Spooks), Pam Ferris (Little Dorrit,) Miranda Hart (Miranda), Judy Parfitt (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Helen George (Doctors), Bryony Hannah (Cemetery Junction), Laura Main (Monarch of the Glen), Stephen McGann (Emmerdale), Cliff Parisi (EastEnders)

Guest Starring: Vanessa Redgrave (Letters to Juliet), Ronald Pickup (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), Kacey Ainsworth (EastEnders), Ruth Sheen (Doc Martin)

Friday at 8.30pm on December 26 BBC First.