New Brit hit comes to the U.S.: 'Call the Midwife'

* CALL THE MIDWIFE. 8 p.m.

Sunday, WHYY 12.

'DOWNTON ABBEY" and the Olympics aren't the only TV events crossing the Atlantic this year: Starting Sunday, there's also PBS' "Call the Midwife," a six-episode series about nurse-midwives in the East End of London in the 1950s whose finale earlier this year drew 11.4 million viewers in a country of about 62 million - more than the first-season finale of "Downton."

"We all believed in the project, but we had no idea it was going to be the hit that it was," said Jessica Raine, who plays midwife Jenny Lee in a story based on a trilogy of memoirs by the late Jennifer Worth, in an interview this summer.

Raine, whose previous work often involved "playing incredibly contemporary, rebellious teenagers," finds it funny that some see her as having a '50s face.

"When we were filming, people just kept saying that to me: 'You are from the '50s,' " said the actress, whom online sources peg as being from at most, the early 1980s.

What she knew of the period before she put on Lee's nursing uniform: "All I thought of, to be honest, were the clothes, the beautiful dresses. And I didn't really realize how deprived the country was. And it made me really think about my Gran."

Asked what it was like to realize she'd grow up to be Vanessa Redgrave - who narrates the show as the voice of the older Jenny - she laughed.

"I was floored," she said, though she hadn't met her future self.

"I did some [dubbing] and she'd been in just before me and she'd left a big load of her jewelry because it was clattering when she did the voice-over work. I could see this little tumble of jewelry, and that's Vanessa," she said, laughing. "I'd love to meet her."