MUMBAI: BBC Worldwide has sold the first season of the British drama, ?Call The Midwife?, to PBS.

The series will premiere on 30 September, leading into Masterpiece Classic ?Upstairs Downstairs?. PBS aims at transforming Sunday nights into a destination for drama.

Written by Heidi Thomas and directed by Philippa Lowthorpe and Jamie Payne, ?Call The Midwife? completed its first season in the UK on BBC One in February 2012. Attracting 10.7 million viewers for its peak episode, ?Call The Midwife? was the highest-rated BBC new drama launch on record.

A second season has been commissioned and will air in the UK in 2013. ?Call The Midwife? is a Neal Street production for BBC, produced by Hugh Warren.

PBS president, CEO Paula Kerger said, "Call The Midwife is a riveting new series that strengthens PBS as a destination for drama on Sunday nights. We look forward to working with our BBC partners to introduce the story and the characters that were so beloved in Britain to the American audience."

Based on the best-selling memoirs of Jennifer Worth, ?Call The Midwife? is a moving and intimate story of midwifery in London?s East End in the 1950s. The first season follows a young Jenny Lee as she and her fellow midwives, attached to an order of nursing nuns, navigate the crowded East End streets teeming with children, workers and a culture remarkably different from the wealthy English countryside where Jenny was raised.

The drama unfolds as Jenny meets her patients, including one woman who is on her 25th pregnancy and a young, 15 year-old prostitute pregnant for the first time. Initially shocked by the health and living conditions of the East End, Jenny soon learns to admire the families she works with, along with the sisters and fellow midwives who witness the daily drama of life in this vibrant community.