A brand-new show is shooting as of this Thursday to be added to the French line-up of Netflix. The midwife-centric drama is, once again, boasting premium talent and full-scale production values. Here is everything we know on the project, who does not have an official title yet.
Maternité (Maternity Ward in English, a working title) is following Maya, a midwife confronted with its own desire for a child and a partner who breaks up with her the day she finds out she is pregnant after starting an IVF proceedure. Said boyfriend also works as a doctor and a colleague in the same service hospital. According to the official synopsis provided by Netflix,
“Maya is then pressured into supervising complicated childbirths with him inside the maternity ward of a seriously understaffed public hospital, itself at its breaking point. Maya is then facing an impossible choice : giving birth alone, or renouncing her dream of becoming a mother”.
Izia Higelin, starring in 2022 French movie Takedown, directed by Louis Leterrier. Cr : Emmanuel Guimier.
The series is created by Marjorie Bosch and Sarah Farkas, with Slimane-Baptiste Berhoun serving as showrunner and codirector on part of the season with Keren Ben Rafael. Berhoun has yet to work on a Netflix project, but has worked as director on a slate of French ambitious dramas over the years, including high-concept sci-fi show Vortex, ordered by public broadcaster France Télévisions, which eventually became a Netflix Original globally, and Paramount+’s abandoned series The Signal. Berhoun himself has teased the show on his Instagram profile, through what appears to be the model-size version of the proposed maternity ward set. The writing staff is comprised of Marjorie Bosch, Sarah Farkas, Éliane Vigneron, Elina Gakou-Gomba and Clément Marchand. The show is produced by young company Oberkampf Productions (a division of Mediawan), in association with Tamasha Productions and Loch Ness Productions and shooting around Paris and the Ile-de-France area. The episode count for the first season has yet to be determined.
Who is starring in Maternité (working title)?
Izïa Higelin is set to play the lead. The multi-hyphenate has enjoyed a career in both movies and music over the past two decades, with a slew of rock albums and tours over the country, but she also has had early success with a César award of Meilleur Espoir Féminin, for 2013’s Bad Girl. She also appeared in Netflix action movie Takedown in 2022, with Lupin’s Omar Sy.
The cast is rounded out by Pablo Pauly, Mouloud Ayad, Manon Kneusé, Louise Labèque, Gaspard Meier, Clémentine Justine, Florence Loiret Caille (The Bureau, also a guest star in recent Netflix French comedy Flunked), Nicolas Briançon and Assaâd Bouab.
The project marks yet another medical show project for Netflix, which seems to be in big demand for slates all over the world. There is an untitled project out of Norway, a Polish drama entitled Anaesthesia, and recently ordered drama MED out of Brazil. All this and recently renewed drama Breathless on the Spanish side, as broadcasters and platforms look to satiate the audience’s appetite for the genre, following the continued global success of Grey’s Anatomy and The Pitt.
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