The Woman in the Wall review: BBC drama about the Magdalene laundries
Ruth Wilson gives an extraordinary performance but the series is ‘hysterically overcooked’

A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
“The Woman in the Wall’s title did not seduce me,” said Carol Midgley in The Times: plonking the words “woman” or “girl” in the title of novels and adaptations became fashionable some while ago (“The Girl on the Train”, “The Woman in the Window”, etc.), and it now grates. Yet the drama turned out to be one of the finest I’ve seen this year. “Easily.”
Ruth Wilson is perfectly cast as Lorna, a “pitiful, vulnerable” woman from a fictional town on the west coast of Ireland who was robbed of her baby in one of the country’s notorious Magdalene laundries. Wilson gives an extraordinary, “physical performance”; and she is well supported by a cast that includes Hilda Fay as another victim of the laundries, and Philippa Dunne as a campaigner fighting for justice. “My only reservation with tragic subject matter such as this is that it might be so good, it’s unbearable.”
Series writer Joe Murtagh and his producers have certainly “thrown everything they’ve got” at this, said Rachel Cooke in The New Statesman. The result, alas, struck me as a “preposterous mess”. There are “some OK moments, I suppose”, but a lot of “portentous cheese”, too – “knives plunged into gaudy reproductions of Jesus Christ”, thunder claps that are “straight out of Poltergeist”, and so on. And to make this scandal so “cartoonish” is to “fail fully to acknowledge its heinousness”. I found it “hysterically overcooked”, agreed Ed Power in The Irish Times. Cast aside, no Irish people were involved in the making of this drama – and it shows.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Where to watch: BBC iPlayer
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
-
Quiz of The Week: 16 - 22 September
Puzzles and Quizzes Have you been paying attention to The Week’s news?
By Harriet Marsden Published
-
Humanitarian purposes
Cartoons
By The Week Staff Published
-
Magazine printables - September 29, 2023
Puzzles and Quizzes Issue - September 29, 2023
By The Week Staff Published
-
Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance review
The Week Recommends Fitzwilliam Museum exhibition features lives affected by the Atlantic slave trade
By The Week Staff Published
-
Private Lives review: a 'witty' revival of Noël Coward's classic comedy
The Week Recommends Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers play the warring exes in this 'delicious retro treat'
By The Week Staff Published
-
Wilderness review: a soapy drama set in the American southwest
The Week Recommends Amazon series starring Jenna Coleman and Oliver Jackson-Cohen is 'full of twists'
By The Week Staff Published
-
Volkswagen ID.5 review: what the car critics say
Feature The ID.4's 'sportier, more stylish twin' – but 'don't believe the hype'
By The Week Staff Published
-
Jamaica Inn review: a small patch of Caribbean heaven
The Week Recommends Guests will feel like one of the family at this boutique beach resort in Ocho Rios
By Natasha Langan Published
-
Scottish Women Artists review
The Week Recommends Exhibition uncovers the work of female artists long hidden in 'historical obscurity'
By The Week Staff Published
-
Dracula: Mina's Reckoning review
The Week Recommends A groundbreaking and distinctively Scottish retelling of Bram Stoker's classic novel
By The Week Staff Published
-
Top Boy review: a fitting finale to the gangland drama
The Week Recommends This brilliant show is bowing out at exactly the right time – at the top
By The Week Staff Published