First look at The Woman In The Wall: BBC’s new gothic thriller stars Ruth Wilson as a woman searching for her daughter after being sent to one of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries
- Ruth Wilson stars in the BBC’s new gothic thriller The Woman In The Wall
- READ MORE: Ruth Wilson, 40, admits she ‘thinks about having a baby every day’
Ruth Wilson looks every inch the tortured soul in the first trailer for the BBC’s new gothic thriller The Woman In The Wall.
The BAFTA award-winning actress, 41, features in the six-part series alongside Peaky Blinders star Daryl McCormack, 30, as it examines the legacy of one of Ireland’s most shocking scandals, the inhumane institutions known as the Magdalene Laundries.
Wilson’s character Lorna Brady, from a fictional town of Kilkinure, wakes one morning to find a corpse in her house. Chillingly, she has no idea who the dead woman is or if she herself might be responsible for the apparent murder.
Lorna has long suffered from extreme bouts of sleepwalking after she was confined to the Kilkinure Convent aged 15. The institution was home to one of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene Laundries.
The Catholic-run workhouses, where untold horrors are said to have taken place, housed women branded ‘undesirable’ by the church and orphaned children. They were shockingly in operation until 1996.
Lorna was incarcerated at one of the Magdalene Laundries before giving birth to her daughter Agnes, who was cruelly taken from her and whose fate she has never known.
During the BBC’s new series, the ambitious and elusive Detective Colman Akande (played by McCormack) is on Lorna’s tail for a crime which is seemingly unrelated to the dead woman she’s discovered in her house.
First-look images show Wilson’s character lying in the street surrounded by cows after having a sleepwalking episode.
Meanwhile, another image shows the detective in a graveyard and walking through what appears to be an abandoned building.
The trailer depicts Lorna struggling with the loss of her daughter, until she discovers that she might be still alive and hunts for her whereabouts.
Elsewhere, the detective appears to be investigating the apparent murder of a priest who was linked to Lorna’s past.
Made by Motive Pictures for BBC and SHOWTIME, The Woman in The Wall is written by Joe Murtagh, directed by Harry Wootliff and Rachna Suri, with Susan Breen as producer.
Executive producers are Simon Maxwell, Sam Lavender, Joe Murtagh, Ruth Wilson and Harry Wootliff, with Lucy Richer for BBC.
Ruth Wilson (pictured as her character Lorna Brady) looks every inch the tortured soul in the first trailer for the BBC’s new gothic thriller The Woman In The Wall
The BAFTA award-winning actress (pictured), 41, features in the six-part series alongside Peaky Blinders star Daryl McCormack, 30, as it examines the legacy of one of Ireland’s most shocking scandals, the inhumane institutions known as the Magdalene Laundries
The Magdalene Laundries were institutions, generally run by Catholic religious organisations, that operated for more than 200 years from the 18th century to the late 20th Century.
The laundries, depicted in the award-winning film ‘The Magdalene Sisters’, put an estimated 10,000 women and girls as young as nine through uncompromising hardship from the foundation of the Irish state in 1922 until 1996.
Run by Catholic nuns, the laundries have been accused of treating inmates like slaves, imposing a regime of fear and prayer on girls sometimes put in their care for becoming pregnant outside of marriage.
They were established to house unmarried mothers, but later expanded to house girls who were considered ‘promiscuous’, the criminal, mentally unwell and girls who were seen as a burden on their families.
Former inmates spoke of physically demanding work, enforced by scoldings and humiliation, at the laundries that operated on a commercial basis to wash linen and clothes for the state, private firms and individuals.
In the past, Ireland’s strict Catholic morality made it deeply shameful to become pregnant before marriage, and women would be rejected by their families and society as sinful.
During the BBC’s new series, the ambitious and elusive Detective Colman Akande (played by Daryl McCormack, pictured) is on Lorna’s tail for a crime which is seemingly unrelated to the dead woman she’s discovered in her house
The power of the Church and the stigma associated with unmarried mothers were so overwhelming that for decades the harsh treatment of these women and their children were taboo subjects, and many were forgotten.
While the Magdaline Laundries were especially prevalent in Ireland, there were also homes across Australia, Canada and England.
In Australia, girls faced verbal abuse, long hours of work and long hours of silence in the convents. Women were often injured while working with hard machinery and faced dangers of spreading diseases.
In Canada, a network of asylums housed women without public funding. By the late 1800s in England, many laundries had resembled penitentiary workhouses.
Source: Read Full Article
