Call The Midwife Lead Star Departure Revealed

An Adventure in Space and Time and Line of Duty's Jessica Raine leaves the period drama tomorrow.
The Mirror and other sources have reported today that lead star Jessica Raine will depart the BBC's period drama Call the Midwife in the final episode of its third season. Raine has played the character of Jenny since the show's inception (marvellously, we might add), but in recent months has signed on to a number of other projects including the BBC Two Doctor Who 50th Anniversary docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time (which aired last November) and the BBC Two police drama Line of Duty (currently in the midst of its second season).

As the old saying goes, though, the show must go on, and that idiom remains largely true in this instance. Call The Midwife was commissioned for a fourth season of eight instalments last month, but that the actress' name was not amongst the list of confirmed returnees should have already set the alarm bells ringing for regular followers of one of the most popular period productions of recent times. We wish Jessica all the best of luck in her future endeavours both in the TV and film industry, and look forward to seeing her name inevitably adorn the cast listings of countless high-brow projects in the not too distant future. For now, at least there's still an hour left to be spent in the company of Jenny (and indeed, the notion of how the programme itself will deal with the lack of the character whose older persona has traditionally narrated events will be fascinating come Christmas 2014).

Call The Midwife concludes its third season on BBC One tomorrow, March 9th at 8pm.