Ageing across Space and Time: Exploring Concepts of Ageing and Identity in the Female Ensemble Dramas Tenko and Call the Midwife

Abstract

This article focuses on two female ensemble dramas Tenko (BBC/Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1981–5) and Call the Midwife (BBC, 2012–) and uses an ageing studies lens to explore the way that the ensemble format provides a particularly rich insight into the relationship between women, ageing and understandings of women's identity over time. The two dramas provide complex and evocative links between the spaces and times of British politics, culture and society in different historical periods enabling a highly nuanced engagement with the ideological constructions of concepts of age and women's gendered identities.