Life and Birth: what time the documentary series is on BBC One tonight, the hospitals featured and who appears in episode 1

Tonight the BBC launches a brand new series, Life and Birth – and fans of One Born Every Minute need to take notice.

The show highlights exactly what it is like bringing a child into the world – from all angles. It follows parents and staff at three of Birmingham’s biggest maternity hospitals, chronicling the journey of giving birth from start to finish, as well as the complications that can arise.

Here is everything you need to know…

When is Life and Birth on TV?

The first episode of Life and Birth will air at 8pm on Thursday 23 April on BBC One.

There will be six episodes in total, airing at the same time each week.

What should we expect?

The show will be narrated by Suranne Jones, who played Karen McDonald on Coronation Street from 2000 to 2004, and has since starred as Gemma Foster in BBC drama Doctor Foster and Sally Wainwright in Gentleman Jack.

The BBC says it “goes beyond the stories of the labour ward and meets the people who help the safe and healthy delivery of babies, showing maternity care in a way that it has not been seen before”.

Viewers will get to see everything from regular, planned births to intricate lifesaving surgical procedures on babies in the womb and specialist care for women who have had multiple miscarriages.

It comes from the team behind Ambulance, a similar BBC documentary series which took an inside look at ambulance services.

It was filmed at Heartlands Hospital, Good Hope Hospital and Birmingham Women’s Hospital in the Midlands.

Clare Sillery, dead of documentary commissioning at the BBC, said: “This programme is going to be a fascinating addition to the BBC One schedule to bring families together in the miracle of birth. We hope audiences will enjoy it as much as they love Ambulance.”

Who is featured on it?

The first episode will feature 22-year-old mother-to-be Ashley, who is expecting a baby with her childhood sweetheart Luke.

She said: “A lot of people do try to make out like pregnancy is full of rainbows and magic. It’s not this big bubble of glitter that everybody makes out. But you are over the moon and happy when you are handed that baby at the end. That’s the part that makes everything worth it.”

Also featured is Billie-Joe, who is pregnant with twins, and her boyfriend Josh.

She has a rare twin pregnancy, where one of the twins has no formed brain or heartbeat, but is taking the nutrients and oxygen from the healthy sibling, which is working so hard to support both of them that it is at risk of having heart failure and dying at 20 to 24 weeks.

The doctor tasked with saving them is Professor Mark Kilby, a clinical scientist and consultant in foetal medicine at the Birmingham Women’s Foundation Trust Hospital.

He told i: “This rare twin condition happens in one in 100,000 pregnancies.

“It doesn’t seem many, and it isn’t, but because we get referrals from all over the north of England, the Midlands and the Home Counties, we probably see one of these every two weeks.”