BBC commissions fourth series of Call The Midwife and Death In Paradise

(Image credit: BBC/Neal Street Productions)

Call The Midwife and Death In Paradise have both been recommissioned by the BBC for a fourth series.

Award-winning period drama Call The Midwife, starring Miranda Hart, Jessica Raine and Jenny Agutter, is set to return for another season, this time set in the 60s.

"It is 1960 in London's East End. A new decade dawns, and with it come different and exciting challenges for the team at Nonnatus House. Can the nuns and midwives hold onto their traditional values in a rapidly changing world?" a spokesman teased.

The medical drama, which was created by Heidi Thomas, follows the lives of a group of midwives living and working in London's East End during the late 50s.

The third series, which continues on BBC One on Sundays, has so far tackled the subjects of childhood illnesses, disability and birth in prison, as well as the death of one of the series' central characters.

Meanwhile, crime comedy-drama Death In Paradise has also been given the green light for another season.

It stars Kris Marshall as a detective inspector sent to the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie to investigate a murder.

The show continues its third series on BBC One on Tuesdays.

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.