‘Call the Midwife’ season 4 premiere: Did ratings drop without Jessica Raine?

Anytime that you see a significant shift in a series, it is always interesting to see how the majority of the viewing public will respond. For “Call the Midwife,” this significant shift was seeing the end of Jessica Raine on the series as the Jennifer Worth character. She was in many ways the principal person on the show, and it would have made sense if there was some erosion.

Well, our early guess after looking at some of the premiere ratings is that there could have been some … but it would be unfair to blame the entire decline on her and her alone. Overall, the BBC One series drew 8.3 million viewers in its premiere, which is still tremendous and over a 32% share in the viewing public. However, this is down more than a million from the 9.6 million who first tuned in to the season 3 premiere. Part of the reason for the drop may be due to the show actually losing many viewers during the season last year, given that it ended with 8.2 million. Premieres always tend to perform better than finales, so this seems to be a cumulative effect in many ways.

The biggest reason why there is no need to worry about this series’ fate is rather simple: There is already a fifth season ordered by BBC One. When you know that you are not going anywhere, why sweat some of the small stuff? It will still be interesting to chart the show’s performance in the months ahead, though, mostly in watching to see if it can maintain this figure.

There are still seven episodes ahead, and you can head over here to preview the next installment of the show right now!

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