Magdalene Laundry at heart of new TV drama

THE traumas of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries are a fertile area for TV drama.

The infamous religious institutions form the backdrop to the new six-part gothic thriller The Woman In The Wall which starts on BBC1 tomorrow (SUNDAY AUGUST 27) at 9.05pm,

Written by Bafta-nominated Joe Murtagh, it stars Ruth Wilson as Lorna, a woman left traumatised by her experiences in a Magdalene Laundry.

She was forcibly moved there at the age of 15 and, like many who shared her predicament, has struggled to cope with life ever since.

Now suffering from PTSD-related sleepwalking, she awakes one day to find a dead woman in her home - and has no idea whether she was responsible for her murder.

To make matters worse, ambitious detective Colman Akande (Daryl McCormack), a man with dark secrets of his own, is investigating Lorna for another crime that may or may not be related to her current situation.

Writer Murtagh says: “My family is from Mayo, the county in which the fictional Kilkinure Magdalene Laundry in the series is set, and it deeply frustrates and saddens me that it feels so few people have heard of the laundries that existed across Ireland.

I hope that by making something that has the familiarity of a genre piece, we are able to shed some light on the awful things that occurred within these kind of institutions and introduce this history to the wider public, so that nothing like it may ever happen again.

Wilson says of her character: “Lorna Brady is complex and fascinating and I’m thrilled to help bring her to life.

“Joe has created both an enthralling gothic thriller and a moving examination of the legacy of the Magdalene laundries. It’s a privilege to bring this story to screens.”

“They’re fictional characters but it digs deep into the truth of it and how the tentacles reached throughout the whole community and the whole country,” explains Wilson.

It asks a lot of questions.

“I know art can have the power to create discussion,” says Peaky Blinders’ McCormack, “and that can have movement to do something even more fundamental. Our heart was always to be sensitive and to honour the people from these events as much as we possibly could.”

Murtagh resolved to create the series after watching Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters - it was “the fact that I didn’t know about this, and that no-one else I spoke to outside of Ireland knew about this”.

Still, it took him another ten years to put pen to paper and the weight of the legacy hasn’t dissipated. “It was absolutely paramount that we were not being exploitative or insensitive or inauthentic.”