Now that the final episode has aired, I can tell this one properly. Last November I packed the jib away at Longcross for the last time.

I joined Call the Midwife on series eleven, back in 2021 — five series and four years of days and nights on the Poplar backlot for Neal Street Productions. On the final day, I operated the last shot of the last episode.

Working on the set, you sometimes forget that most of it is not real. The bridge arch and all but one of the buildings were painstakingly built from scratch by the talented art department, and it’s testament to them that the show looked so real and true to the era, down to the very last detail. Cars, shop signs, prams, clothing… every single thing considered and accurate. Then one night a wrap is called on the whole production, the lamps go out on Wick Street, and it’s a backlot again.

I’ll miss it. Not just the work — the unit. Familiar faces long after the light had gone, the same jokes in the same rain, a crew who knew each other well enough to work fast and quietly. That’s the part you don’t get back.

Thank you to Neal Street, to the camera department, and to everyone who made a jib operator welcome for four years. It’s a rare thing to be part of something that long. Rarer still to be handed the last frame of it.

Goodnight, Poplar.

Not quite the end of the story, mind. I’ve been back with Neal Street on Call the Midwife: Sisters in Arms, the three-part prequel coming to BBC One and iPlayer this Christmas. More on that nearer the time.