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.

I don't think she'd have been done for murder, maybe concealing a dead body? Lorna didn't kill anyone just had a very weird reaction to finding someone she thought was dead....

But yeah the long lost dd might be a bit 😳

@Girliefriendlikespuppies yes I suppose you are right although in the real world if a dead body turns up in your house , there's no evidence anyone else was there and you have a motive and no explanation you would probably be charged with at least manslaughter

Well, she was jailed for it but she didn't commit murder , maybe manslaughter as she was the cause of her death but even then she was trying to hide what she thought was a dead body , not sure what would happen in real life .

Would have been nice if said how long she was in prison for

I think it would be unlawful act manslaughter - where you commit an unlawful or dangerous act (in this instance concealing a body) which inadvertently results in a death. The act would have to be something which a reasonable person would know to carry the risk of physical harm, which would obviously be the case if you put a living person into a wall cavity, but not necessarily if you genuinely believed the person to be already dead.

I imagine Lorna would have pleaded guilty to manslaughter, as she was determined to take responsibility in the end. However, forensic evidence would have been able to show that Aoife did not suffer death through violence or that Lorna had committed any violent act against her. She did actually admit to a policeman that she put Aoife in the wall - that they didn't search the house beyond looking in the wall cavity is not Lorna's fault. Lorna thought Aoife was dead, she had no reason to think Aoife wold have climbed upwards to a place where she could have been found and saved - she wasn't trying to cover anything up. And she committed the crime in a state of sleep walking, and I wonder if this counts as a form of temporary insanity.

Lorna did do other criminal acts - torching evidence, breaking in and removing public records etc. I doubt very much she would have received a long sentence for these acts, however.

I am sure Coleman would have told her daughter that everything Lorna did was as a result of her desperation to find out what happened to her baby, and if she hadn't acted in the way she had, she would not in fact have found the evidence to trace Agnes (or found out what happened to hundreds of other children).

Let's also not forget that Aoife was part of the baby selling operation - seemingly right at the heart of it. She only stopped being a nun because of her medical condition. She did not step forward publicly to try to tell the truth about what went on in that institution, even though the Catholic Church has been exposed for at least 20 years now. And didn't contact the women with the truth until 30 years after they lost their babies, and endured all the torment, guilt, shame and societal disapprobation over those years. In fact, she only did anything to contact the Magdalen women, because she happened to get hold of documents from Father Percy's house on the night he died. As someone one knew what was happening there, she could have blown the whistle much sooner, but didn't. She was no angel.

I think the unrealistic wacky illnesses of the 2 women spoiled a good story. They had enough interesting material without exaggerated sleepwalking/ fake dead illnesses to just make it look a bit silly

@2Rebecca I agree, I actually think a much more interesting drama would have been having Lorna and Aoife interact and do the detective work together, using Aoife's background knowledge of the baby selling practice, and work through their respective roles in what happened to them 30 years ago in the laundries. Exploring the role the church played in both their fates, as someone brought into the system against their will (Lorna), and someone who may or may not have thought she had any choice but to follow orders in order to fulfil her religious calling (Aoife).

We weren't told the exact timeline, but I assumed that in the final scene Lorna was still in custody awaiting trial. I assume she could only be convicted of manslaughter, but her lawyer would probably push for diminished responsibility and a lesser sentence. Ironic that being in prison finally sets her mind free to sleep properly!

I don't understand the mentality of the writer/ production team in thinking " this Magdalene laundry stuff and baby trafficking is a bit tame lets add in 2 very rare unlikely illnesses to spice it up"

I agree.

Cognitive dissonance gets stronger the longer it goes on & the nearer you are to facing your own mortality imo. I think it unlikely that those involved have had a massive mea culpa moment. They'll likely still belive they were doing Gods work.

It's a variation on the Nuremberg defence - just following superior orders. Up to the level of an invisible leader, who, in their belief, is the only person who can really sit in judgement.

Or maybe they still think they were doing God’s work

Absolutely they would. T

hey have spent their lives living in a moral vacuum where twisting the Bible to their own perversions is normal.

Priests/nuns are not allowed to marry (why? when "St" Peter himself was and had children!) so usual sexual feelings are then submerged and come out in disgusting perverted way. And women who get pregnant through normal relationships are trodden down and made subservient to make the priests and nuns look higher (in their own eyes).

I think she sleeps properly now as knows her daughter is alive somewhere

Yeah so this is what felt really shitty about the ending for me. She was told she was a criminal and a degenerate and not fit to be a mother her whole life - and then when she finally gets to meet her daughter, she IS a criminal. So unfair :(

I fully agree.
It spoiled for me, what was a very good series.

Catalepsy was one illness. What was the other one? Did I miss that detail?

I think perhaps she means how extreme the sleepwalking was?

Yes, sleepwalking to the extent that you smash things up with an axe, set fire to things and put bodies in walls is definitely an illness, but a highly unlikely illness as most sleepwalkers carry out automatic actions not walking somewhere particular and targeting a particular area with an axe. That is not your brain on autopilot and is likely to be thought to be a fictitious illness by a psychiatrist. The extreme catalepsy (which sounds more like cataplexy) is also very rare.

I am actually very familiar with Cataplexy as my OH was diagnosed with Narcolepsy with cataplexy over 10 years ago. The automatic behaviour is a big thing but its never focused on one particular thing. It's definitely like autopilot..

The cataplexy is a loss of muscle tone triggered by strong emotion like Aoife catalepsy and has ended him up in resus several times over the years. (When your chest isn't rising and falling to the point that you are oxygen deprived, it's time for medical help).

The sleepwalking is a trauma response in Lorna case but the smashing things with axes, setting fires and putting bodies in walls just didn't fit as part of sleepwalking so my brain wasn't recognising it on its own.

Just finished watching the series, very harrowing. It reminds me of the Film and book 'Orange and Sunshine', about the children from the UK whose mothers were told they had died after being sent away to children’s homes during the war, and they were sent to Oz, NZ, SA and Canada, promised a life in the sunshine and used and abused by homes there, or farms, whoever they were placed. It went on into the seventies, and it chills me to,think that my brother and I could have been those kids. Unbelievable the cruelty done to children and their parents in our recent lifetimes. It was a social worked that discovered it all. Church and children’s homes involved.

Just finished this tonight and loved it. Much better than anything I've seen on this topic before as it really showed how this affected so many people in so many different ways. I don't think we really needed happy endings here much as we wanted them.

I was ready to give up but actually really glad I stuck with it now, I thought it was very well done in the end, a few things did annoy me but they've already been mentioned so I won't repeat it.

Thanks again for the tag @Blondeshavemorefun

Another one agreeing with this.