THE WOMAN IN THE WALL. BBC 1 sun 9pm - TV PACE. NO SPOILERS

[Blondeshavemorefun]

this is a 6 part drama

1 is shown sun and then 2 on the monday

3456 the following 4 Sundays

it’s will no doubt be on iPlayer but try and not binge lovely people in my phone 😂😂😂

this will be tv paced

Ruth Wilson and Daryl McCormack are teaming up for a gripping new BBC drama, which is inspired by the horrifying revelations around Ireland's Magdalene Laundries.

The Woman In The Wall follows the horrors experienced by Lorna Brady (Ruth Wilson) is a woman from the small, fictional Irish town of Kilkinure, who wakes one morning to find a corpse in her house.

Lorna is chilled to the core as she has no idea who the dead woman is or if she could even be responsible for the apparent murder herself. This is a deadly possibility because Lorna suffers from extreme bouts of sleepwalking, which started around the time she was ripped from her life at the age of 15 and incarcerated in the Kilkinure Convent.

The Woman in the Wall follows Lorna Brady (Wilson), a woman who was incarcerated in a convent from a young age, where she traumatically gave birth – only to have the baby taken away from her to whereabouts unknown.

The awful treatment she endured continues to impact her life, causing extreme bouts of sleepwalking that end with her waking up in strange places with no memory of how she got there.

While her specific story is a work of fiction, the Magdalene Laundries were very real and are thought to have blighted the lives of tens of thousands of women.

Although their history dates back further, more is known about the practices of these institutions in the 20th century, where inmates entered via the criminal justice system, reformatory schools and the Health and Social Services sector.

Once inside, they would have to carry out unpaid labour, while many former inmates have reported being abused.

Magdalene Laundries became the subject of a media scandal in the 1990s, when a mass grave holding 155 bodies was discovered on the former grounds of one such institution in Drumcondra, Dublin.

Great series

My word I don't often cry at a tv programme!

Ignoring the fact that Lorna had the biggest house in Ireland, with the biggest cavities known to man, when she was a single woman on a seamstress salary; I think it was done so well. It didn't answer all the questions, because in real life there are still so many questions about what happened.

Felt happy yet sad that Lorna got to meet her daughter while being in prison. Felt wrong that those who should have been doing jail time still were free.

Because she caused Aoife to die in such a horrible way, I lost all sympathy for Lorna by the end, and was unmoved by her joy at finding the daughter. Shame, as I was rooting for her for most of the series.

1. He was Aoife’s husband. Without his character, we wouldn’t know who Aoife was and even if she was real or a figment of Lorna’s sleep deprived imagination. He was also the one driving the car that drove away from Father Percy’s house the night he died. Thus providing a possible suspect, because at first they thought he killed the father. But then, his car being picked up by traffic cameras that night provided a timeline to show that Father Percy did not die from his altercation with Aoife, but woke up and placed a phone call to evil lawyer man Coyle.
2. She was Coyle’s accomplice. Tracking Aoife’s footsteps to try to recover all the incriminating documents she took from Father Percy’s house. Father Percy would have known Aoife would return to the town where she had worked and track down the local laundry girls in that area.
3. it’s implied thee will be a mass grave somewhere on the grounds - thee have been real life cases of this.
4. Stupid and weak bit of the story, yes. But perhaps she didn’t wake up for a while/ was weak when she did/ had a fatal attack of her epilepsy after having exerted herself too much in the climb up. Didn’t her husband mention something about her needing medication?
5. She arranged to meet Lorna in the pub to give her the info on Agnes . But then Lorna met that chap she’d been at school with in the pub. Aoife stayed in the pub watching her. Lorna got drunk, had the altercation where she hit her head. Aoife took Lorna home. While Lorna slept, Aoife looked in Lorna’s red room, and found Lorna’s box of stuff pertains to her search for Agnes, this led to Aoife having a stress reaction and passing out - looking dead. Lorna, in a sleep walking state, put her in the wall, having thought she’d killed her.

@daffodilandtulip I think it was her family’s house where they ran a tailoring business. I assume they took her back when she left the laundry and she now lives there alone.

I felt the bit about some of the babies being dead but with no burial records a bit OTT to be honest, like the writers were trying to shoehorn too much in. The child trafficking was horrific enough.

Lorna inherited her parent’s shop and house. That’s why it’s so big. You see it on the flashbacks of her parents having Father Percy drag her off to the laundry.

I feel like Aoife was let down by her husband for not mentioning she was an epileptic with a version that makes you appear dead. Also let down by the police who certainly could have done a bit more checking when Lorna told them Aoife was in her wall!

Poor woman did die a horrible death when she was trying to do the right thing. She'd have also been a brilliant witness for the police to convict all the abusers.

I feel like Lorna was not in her right state of mind when she put her in the wall, it's hardly a normal response is it?

@Clawdy but she didn't. She thought she was dead and that she had done it in me of her sleep walking trances, but she found Aoife collapsed on her red room probably panicked and hid her in the wall. It was truly awful how Aoife died, after how she tried to help Lorna find her daughter. She made sure her daughters file was on her which I thought was a huge thing.

Excellent! Thank you - no idea how I watched it all so carefully and still didnt know all of that 😂

I am a little confused

Did Lorna kill her or not ?

Or she wasn't dead but as thought she was she then hid her and then died

Hence the thumping we heard ?

Glad she found her daughter as helped so many others 'solve' the deaths/adoption

I am still in shock now mean nuns were

Thanks @Ridemeginger

I’m with others on this - felt like there was a lot that was left unanswered, including the dead babies potentially being on the grounds of the convent, and why Colman remembered the tunnel, and now Aoife died?

Im afraid I was pretty disappointed at the end, having loved the rest of the series.

(also, like hell would you leave a prisoner alone with an internet connected device!)

I think it was realistic not to have all the answers at the end. I felt it was all going to be solved, but there was a huge case to bring against the nuns and the rest which could take years.

That man at the school is evil

I thought the ending was spot on.

But I am confused how Aoife ended up in the loft

I thought it was really weak and lightweight, dumbed down series overall and didn't do justice to the topic, and especially with the 'wall' nonsense and weak explanation thrown in to pad it all out.

You'd think the police would have done a bit of a search, to include the obvious attic, given Lorna thought she had killed somebody and confessed. Lots of other loose ends not explained at all, though I'm glad they didn't try after the silly wall plot line.

I wasn't fond of the Irish stereotypes either, as I said earlier in the thread.

I want to answer the thing about the church but really it’s a terribly long story.

Short version.

British handed over control of education to the church because wanted to quell the constant.y bubbling revolts against said rule. Ireland gains independence but has no money so church takes over everything: healthcare, more control of schools, society as a whole. DeValera and his cronies are a load of fantasists who want a perfect iosdana life of fairytales and frolicking on the fields. Because of divided nature of the country to be Irish is to be catholic. Country gets poorer and more under the control of being the perfect catholic nation with a perfect society. In a nutshell.

Wow

She woke up from her catalepsy after Lorna had put her in the wall, and climbed up there herself through the cavities.

I don’t think the writers wanted to give a neatly tied up ending that goes above and beyond what has happened in real life - I don’t think anyone from the Catholic Church or their collaborators has been prosecuted irl, have they? But I guess they are trying to throw in every possible element of abuse and scandal that has emerged from the accounts of what happened in the Magdalen laundries. Hence, there are so many unanswered or unresolved strands making it feel a bit unsatisfactory - because I guess that’s the actual reality for many real life Magdalen women.

I feel like this programme, while gripping, didn’t quite hit because they tied in a quasi supernatural element and a murder mystery (relying heavily on clunky plot devices - anyone who had the plain facts to hand dies) with very real and serious issues around the abuse of past, and continued abuse of former, Magdalen girls. But I guess this was the way to make it a gripper - and possibly also gives the viewer an idea of the head fuckery that these women must experience irl - from the gaslighting of the authorities about what kind of women and mothers they were and are, the unanswered questions as to the fate of their babies, and the completely unapologetic stance of many within the Catholic community - while the official lines of apology are completely lacking in substance and accountability and mainly designed for arse covering - as embodied by the figure of Coyle in this story.

But not seem to even attempt to open the loft hatch, or shout and scream that she was there 🤔

I rated this story telling. I don’t know what I’d have made if it if I hadn’t been exposed to it first hand. So I do understand the comments on here about Nun behaviour etc. The truth however IME is so unpleasant it had to be sanitised for TV. I was taught by Nuns in England and found them to be very unpleasant individuals indeed. It’s absolute bollocks to think they had a religious calling, the majority just signed up to reduce the burden on their families/had nowhere else to go/ were unqualified to do anything else. There was no caring side to any of them that I ever found.

As a child of a mother who had been placed into one of these facilities I can confirm that the headfuckery these women were left with was immense. I also watched my mother lose even more of herself/become even more mentally unwell trying to get justice decades later. It became an absolute obsession that destroyed entirely what few relationships she had - particularly with me. She had a distrust of everyone and outwardly her behaviour was that of a complete narcissist. She destroyed my childhood reliving her own. She was offered but never accepted therapy which was a travesty really. After she passed I read the files. Had she been more open I think I might have had more sympathy but as a mother myself, I cannot understand giving your own child a shitty childhood when you had one yourself. Thankfully I have managed to break this cycle with my own child. The reasons for her entering the facility are not clear. She was the only girl and the younger out of the two sisters to be sent. She also the. Became a Nun herself which was baffling but why I do think I have an older sibling somewhere who may or may not be alive.

it’s all so desperately sad really. I did cry a lot at the end. I thought Ruth Wilson was just fantastic.

Yes, the OP asked how she got up there. I agree that it seems a bit far fetched, but the exertion of getting up there was probably too much for her and she collapsed immediately. What I don't understand is why Lorna found her holding the photos of Agnes, which weren't there when she moved her. Maybe they were in an inside pocket.

I thought the loft hatch was bolted on the outside? She probably did shout and make noises but I think Lorna hallucinated so much she probably thought it was part of that.