Netflix's Joy follows what went into the landmark development of in-vitro fertilization, with a focus on IVF pioneer Jean Purdy

Joy provides a telling snapshot of the ways that societal attitudes hindered the progress of the IVF investigation and establishment of the Bourn Hall Fertility Clinic in Cambridge, and how these views personally impacted not only the team working on it but the women who courageously volunteered to take part — they called themselves the Ovum Club.

Toward the end of Netflix’s “Joy,” the muffled cry of a newborn baby prompts a man and woman in a hospital to embrace out of pure bliss. They aren’t the parents, but they had as much to do with the birth as the mom and dad.

The new Netflix movie "Joy" is about the British doctors who helped conceive the first IVF baby in the late 1970s.

The new Netflix offering looks to shine a light on Jean Purdy in an emotional performance by Thomasin McKenzie

Not to be confused with 2015 Jennifer Lawrence movie, Joy on Netflix is a new 2024 movie starring Thomasin McKenzie that offers a crash course on the history of in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown became the first baby in the world to be born through in vitro fertilization. Known as the first “test-tube baby" — although the IVF process actually takes place on a petri dish — her birth was made possible thanks to the cutting-edge research of three British scientists: Dr.

Inspired by the true story of the development of the first IVF baby, Joy accurately retraces the steps that brought the scientific breakthrough.