‘Gripping’ Ruth Wilson BBC thriller about corpse hidden in house soars up Netflix top 10
The BBC thriller 'The Woman in the Wall,' starring Ruth Wilson, has gained popularity on Netflix. The show explores the dark history of Ireland's Magdalene laundries through a fictional murder mystery.
Why it matters
The show brings historical awareness to the systemic abuse in Magdalene laundries while serving as a successful example of genre-bending television.
Ruth Wilson stars as Magdalene laundries survivor Lorna Brady (Picture: BBC/Motive Pictures/Chris Barr)
The real-life abuse of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland is a horror story in and of itself.
The 2023 BBC drama The Woman in the Wall took those prison-like institutions for young women and constructed a murder investigation around them, set in a sleepy west Ireland town.
Starring Ruth Wilson as survivor Lorna Brady, the six-parter has now been added to Netflix and started to gain traction in the top 10 ranking of TV shows.
In a nod to the history that Ireland is still reckoning with, the drama sees a group of women come together to get the convent where they were kept as teens recognised as a Magdalene laundry.
Named for Mary Magdalene, these church-run institutions became places parents sent their daughters to hide out-of-wedlock pregnancies – as is the case with Lorna.
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