BBC drama Babies: The aftermath of miscarriage painted with devastating accuracy

New BBC One series Babies might break your heart. But, for millions of viewers, it might also tell your truth. Across six episodes, the series follows Lisa (Siobhán Cullen) and Stephen (Paapa Essiedu) through the pain of multiple miscarriages. As everyday life and all the quiet complexities of work, friendships and family continues, the pair must navigate this deep loss.

“It’s a couple who have never been through any kind of trauma,” explains Stefan Golaszewski, who writes, directs, and also composed and performed the affecting theme song (think Deserter’s Songs-era Mercury Rev, fronted by Syd Barrett).

“They’ve lived lovely, happy lives. They found each other. Everything is going well. And this is the first moment they walk into a window. It’s that stunning moment everyone goes through where you have revealed to you the chaos of the world.”

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This is a series clearly written from lived experience; there is almost too much painful truth in Babies. One in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage – that is around 250,000 a year in the UK – while one in four women will experience miscarriage in their lifetime.

“I will say that it’s not autobiographical, but I do have quite significant experience of the issues in the show,” says Golaszewski, whose Bafta-winning comedy series Mum was a slow-burn classic, a gently comedic study of family and the gradual flowering of new older love after loss.

“And having had that experience, I’m aware how a show that explores those issues truthfully and honestly might make people feel less alone. 

“When you do start to talk about it, if it happens to you, it’s like lifting a stone and finding a load of insects underneath it. Every stone you lift, there’s a story. A lot of people go through this but just don’t talk about it.” 

So why do we hear about it so rarely? It’s complicated. There’s the social pressure not to reveal pregnancies until after 12 weeks, meaning fewer friends or family members share either the initial joy (other, more complex emotions are available) or will be aware of the loss and able to offer support. 

“An awful lot of couples go through this in total isolation because nobody has even known that they’ve even conceived,” says Cullen. “It can be such an isolating experience.”

“Grief is famously hard to talk about,” Golaszewski adds. “But this is also a grief that isn’t universally acknowledged to be grief. If this was something that had affected male bodies for thousands of years, it would be quite totemic in our society.”

Read more:

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Depictions of miscarriage on screen are often sudden and violent. A face contorted, the horrific realisation of what is happening, a close-up of some blood, perhaps. Then quick-cut to the next part of the story. 

By contrast, Babies is unflinching and unhurried. It stays with its protagonists through it all. An initial scan in which the couple find out life-changing, life-stopping news is shot in one extended take. Excitement becomes confusion then anxiety. Anxiety turns to fear, which evolves into heartbreak. 

A whole world of emotions told through the extraordinary acting of Cullen and Essiedu. It is stunning television. And, having been in that room and through that experience more than once, quite the most authentic depiction of the worst moment of your life you’re ever likely to see.

“I remove as many words as I can to give the actors that space to do what they do,” says Golaszewski. “But you can’t do it unless the actors are as good as those guys. What’s amazing is they’re able to do that kind of scene then just start chatting about what they had for dinner.”

“On the days that we were shooting the more difficult scenes, there was such an atmosphere of respect for the subject matter. People were so generous and gorgeous,” recalls Cullen. “One of my favourite things about this job was how the subject matter cracked people open. It allowed people to share their stories. I’m not a parent, so to absorb the way people light up when they talk about their children, or to hear about the difficulties they had arriving there, shows the importance of the story we’re telling.”

The aftermath of miscarriage is also painted with devastating accuracy. There’s Lisa watching, but not engaging with, mediocre low-stakes television. There they are, eating, but barely tasting, bland comfort food or drinking alcohol – because, woohoo, now you can again – while never achieving any convivial buzz. And we see them contriving to avoid friends with young kids or pregnant pals, dashing off for a solo cry when babies are handed around among friends. Then there’s trying to conceive again while still mourning a loss.

“As individuals, we don’t experience luxury sadness,” says Golaszewski. “We don’t experience cinematic sadness. There are minutes and they need to be got through. So Lisa does have to keep going to work and she does have to continue to be friendly with that receptionist – but now it’s one of the things she dreads most about every single day. I was trying to capture the way sadness or grief sits in a real life. The way we all go through it.”

Journalists do not usually cry during interviews. But I make an exception while talking via Zoom with Cullen and Essiedu. They’re very nice about it.

“Thank you for sharing with us, because that is a big part of the reason for doing it,” says Essiedu. “A big part of what the show is about is how men don’t talk.”

Because that is the other key element of Babies. Stephen’s best friend Dave (Jack Bannon) and his new girlfriend Amanda (Charlotte Riley) – an oddly mismatched couple, she a high-flyer dealing with her own sadness, he a man-child banter merchant who struggles to connect with his estranged young son – go on their own journey.

“Stephen and Dave use banter as a barrier. As a distancing mechanism,” continues Essiedu. “But there are certain big things that happen in life – grief, love – where that doesn’t work any more.” 

Bannon adds: “The tragedy is that talking honestly to each other, the very thing they’re scared of, holds the key to their survival and success if only they could see it.”

But it’s the central love story that is so compelling about Babies. This is real love, lived-in and comfortable, but still aflame years after sparks first flew in a kebab shop queue. Lisa and Stephen know each other so well. There are no secrets; barely any boundaries. But grief is new territory. And because no one grieves the same way, and no sorrow is easily mapped and managed, cracks can appear in even the strongest pairings. 

“Stefan is not using the incident of child loss as the catalyst for other things. It is the story in itself,” says Riley. “Then it’s, forgive me, the mundanity of grief. I know that when I’ve experienced my own grief, it can be as mundane as permanently being on the couch eating toast or moments of howling at the moon. We don’t ritualise grief any more. We used to have rituals where people got to express that.”

While Lisa allows her pain out, Stephen tries to bury his and maintain a normality in unfathomably unnormal circumstances. He may not be dealing with the physical pain and embodied memory of having been pregnant, but, as Lisa says when she tries to guide him towards confronting what they’re going through: “we made three babies. And all of them died.” Harsh language, maybe. But that’s the reality they are living with. 

“There is a story being told over these six hours, which I don’t think has been given this kind of space or air to breathe on television,” says Essiedu.

“It has this unflinching honesty laced through it, in a way that made me think, this could be really important for people. It could make us think differently, speak to each other differently. And it could make actual change in people’s lives.” 

Babies is on BBC One and iPlayer from Monday 30 March

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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