Downton Abbey may be finished for the season, but the Sunday hits keep coming on PBS.
Two favorites return to the AETN lineup tonight and a fresh serving from Masterpiece arrives next week.
• Call the Midwife. It's time to rejoin the nurse midwives as they welcome a new decade and two new nurses when the British drama returns for a fourth season at 7 p.m. today.
Call the Midwife is set in the convent Nonnatus House and tells the colorful tales of midwifery and families in the Poplar District of London's poor East End.
Based on the best-selling memoirs of the late Jennifer Worth, the series has expanded to include new material.
According to PBS, "In Season 4, audiences can expect a mixture of laughter and tears, along with new faces and captivating, emotional stories celebrating the people of Poplar and the much-loved residents of Nonnatus House.
"With the evolving times come new and exciting challenges for the team at Nonnatus. Will the nuns and midwives hold onto their traditional values in a rapidly changing world?"
The third season took viewers to 1959, the eve of the "Swinging Sixties." So the winds of social change are sweeping through the country and the residents of Nonnatus face some momentous changes of their own.
In tonight's episode, nurse Barbara Gilbert (Charlotte Ritchie) arrives at Nonnatus and, after a disastrous start, earns the respect of her colleagues by helping a new mother overcome difficulties.
Trixie Franklin (Helen George) faces one of the most emotionally draining cases of her career, and Dr. Patrick and Shelagh Turner (Stephen McGann, Laura Main) broker a domestic deal that breaks the mold for the 1950s and '60s.
Finally, Sister Evangelina (Pam Ferris) agrees to undergo tests for her abdominal pain.
The other new nurse this season, Phyllis Crane, is played by Linda Bassett. And don't forget, Jessica Raine left the series at the end of last season when her popular character, nurse Jenny Lee, left Nonnatus House to work at Marie Curie Hospital in Hampstead.
Season 4 will contain eight episodes. The BBC has already commissioned a fifth season, to be broadcast in 2016. The series is rated TV-14.
• Mr Selfridge. The third season of the popular series kicks off at 8 p.m. today. Note the lack of a period in the honorific Mr. It's a British thing.
The drama stars triple Emmy Award winner Jeremy Piven (Entourage) as Harry Gordon Selfridge, the flamboyant American businessman who founded London's famous Selfridge & Co. department store in 1909.
Season 2 took the series up to late 1914 and the outbreak of what would become known as World War I.
Season 3 contains nine episodes and is set in 1918-1919. Along with the rest of Europe, Harry is broken by loss following the death of his beloved wife, Rose (Frances O'Connor), who died suddenly from pneumonia during the Spanish flu pandemic. The tragedy has left Harry all alone and vulnerable to his old enemy, the smug and abusive Lord Loxley (Aidan McArdle).
But life goes on. Window dresser Henri Leclair (Gregory Fitoussi) returns from the war but struggles to adjust to life back at home. Harry's attractive daughters, Rosalie (Kara Tointon) and Violette (Hannah Tointon), are all grown up and causing trouble.
There's also an intriguing new love interest to distract the mourning businessman, and Selfridge's offers the world an escape from post-war depression and gloom. The store may be thriving, but it looks like Harry's charmed life is starting to unravel.
The cast includes Amanda Abbington as head of accessories Miss Josie Mardle; Aisling Loftus as plucky salesgirl Agnes Towler; and Tom Goodman-Hill as chief of staff Roger Grove.
Mr Selfridge will air Sundays through May 17.
• Wolf Hall. Beginning April 5, Masterpiece will unveil the next big thing when the miniseries Wolf Hall debuts at 9 p.m.
The six-part miniseries of "historical drama for a modern audience" charts the meteoric rise of Thomas Cromwell in the Tudor court, from his lowly beginnings as a blacksmith's son to Henry VIII's closest adviser.
Damian Lewis, known best to fans as Nicholas Brody in Showtime's Homeland, will play Henry VIII opposite Mark Rylance as Cromwell.
The miniseries is an adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012) and also features Claire Foy (Little Dorrit) as the calculating and ambitious Anne Boleyn.
Look for a different perspective on Cromwell from that in the familiar A Man for All Seasons.
Rylance tells PBS, "I love it when an author, such as Hilary Mantel, does her research and discovers an original understanding of a very familiar piece of history."
Style on 03/29/2015