4 out of 5

Created by: Joe Murtagh

Writer Joe Murtagh’s The Woman in the Wall backs its way into genre quite uniquely: it has a historical hook via the Magdalene laundries – religion-backed group homes for “troubled” or “fallen” young women – and it has a Broadchurch-y small-town-secrets vibe as a result, with the women who attended such laundries in Ireland forever struggling to have official recognition of that, when their government seems more interested in protecting the churches; and then there’s the slowburn UK mystery of it all, when one such laundry survivor, Lorna Brady (Ruth Wilson) wakes from one of her episodes of sleepwalking to discover a dead woman in her home, prompting the Whats and the Whys of it all.

Of course, we don’t know much of this at first, and that’s part of that uniqueness, with directors Harry Wootliff and Rachna Suri letting Wilson and the story finds its footing naturally, but balancing the tone such that each genre piece doesn’t overwhelm (or undermine) the other.

The laundries are a piece of history of which I wasn’t admittedly aware before the show; Murtagh’s script somewhat assumes our knowledge, which can be a bit of a roadblock, but there’s certainly enough context to understand the gist, and plenty of internet reading to further assist. More importantly for the series’ effectiveness, through such context, you never doubt the weight and deplorableness of that history, and via Wilson and the other actresses portraying laundry survivors, you understand how devastating the trauma from those experiences could be, played out in various ways; for Lorna, she’s incredibly antisocial, and something of an outcast even amongst outsiders, with a brittleness and often misunderstood unpredictability brought about by her sleepwalking.

Wilson’s craft her is mindblowing: she (and, again, the directors, and our writer) is not afraid to let Lorna just be, and we’re essentially meant to see her as a murderer – that she killed this woman she’s discovered – and also just difficult to be around, pushing away any offerings of friendship from those around her; there’s nothing at a surface level to really let a viewer in and sympathize, and yet, we get a sense of the human fitfully banging around within Lorna’s skin, and want to understand more about her. This is given direction with Lorna trying to find out more about the deceased woman, who turns out to be tied to the laundries – and possibly the baby that was taken from Lorna during her time there – and then shifts into a bumpy cat and mouse as the local police (Simon Delaney) and a detective from the city (Daryl McCormack) start to check into matters as well, with the woman now reported as missing.

Delaney does a similarly impressive juggling act with his role, bringing in some local charm that adds notes of small-town comedy, but never in a manner that belittles the people or the subject matter, or that prevents him from fleshing out the character admirably; McCormack’s part is one of the show’s few weaknesses, requiring him to be more of a plot motivator than a cop at various points, and kind of obfuscating and real procedural parts of the mystery with bluster. This kind of hand-waiving distraction pops up with one or two small subplots / characters, who feel added mostly to drop in some thrills to an otherwise purposefully slow story, or to more forcefully humanize Lorna. It’s nothing wholly disruptive, but enough to wonder, by series’ end, if those parts were necessary.

McCormack, thankfully, does prove very necessary, and is allowed to settle into a mode past the midway point, when the show has swirled its pieces around, and starts to put them together. It makes for some truly stunning television at this point: “entertaining” with a mystery, but driving the whole thing home with an incredibly effective, and emotional dramatic angle, without it feeling overwrought or manipulative in the way it uses a real-life tragedy to tell a fictional story, the latter in fact bringing more needed light to the former.