I didn’t get on with the first episode of The Woman in the Wall (BBC One). It was too odd, too disjointed. Was that bit a dream sequence, or did it really happen? Why is Ruth Wilson’s character so nuts? How come some scenes play out like a whimsical drama scripted by Graham Norton, while others are gothic horror, with a bit of meta commentary about Columbo whodunits slung in? But sticking with it proved to be a good decision.
The story at its heart is so strong – the scandal of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries – that it carries you along, and the rest begins to make sense. Of course it has the tone of a horror story, because that’s exactly what this was. Girls forced to give birth in mother-and-baby homes, their children forcibly adopted, under a regime of breathtaking cruelty. The last of these places only closed in 1996.
Lorna (played by Wilson), had her baby in the mid-1980s. One character says of the Catholic Church’s power during that time: “Back then, the fear people had. Honest to God, a lot of people would sooner their daughters were murdered than fall pregnant outside of marriage.”
