Midwives

In October 1998 Oprah Winfrey picked 'Midwives', Chris Bohjalian's fifth novel, for her book club, and it went to the top of The New York Times bestseller list. Three years later Lifetime turned it into 'Midwives', a TV film directed by Glenn Jordan and starring Sissy Spacek, which premiered on the channel on 2 April 2001.

Spacek plays Sibyl Danforth, a midwife in rural Vermont who has spent years delivering babies at home. One winter night, in the middle of a storm, one of her patients runs into trouble in labour. Sibyl wants to get her to hospital, but the phone line is dead and ice and snow make it impossible to leave. In the early hours the mother appears to have died, and Sibyl decides to perform a caesarean to save the baby.

The baby survives, but Sibyl's assistant is convinced the woman was still alive when she started to cut. Sibyl is charged with manslaughter, and as the trial approaches her family's life, her husband Rand and teenage daughter Connie included, is turned upside down.

Peter Coyote is Stephen Hastings, Sibyl's lawyer, Terry Kinney plays Rand and Alison Pill plays Connie, with Piper Laurie also in the cast. Spacek said what drew her to the part was her character's inner struggle with self-doubt. It earned her a Screen Actors Guild nomination and a Satellite nomination, and the Satellites also put it up for best TV film. Years later another Bohjalian novel became 'The Flight Attendant'.

• Crime
• Drama