‘Gripping’ Ruth Wilson BBC thriller about corpse hidden in house soars up Netflix top 10

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. 

Newborns were regularly taken from their mothers and given to adoptive parents (as seen in the Judi Dench-starring film Philomena). 

There were also shocking levels of infant mortality at these mother and baby homes. The drama sees Lorna, decades on from her time in the convent, trying to establish whether her daughter Agnes survived.

She receives a letter from a stranger, reading ‘I know what happened to your child,’ with a phone number.

But the following day, she finds the corpse of the woman behind the phone number in her home and decides to hide her behind the wall of her home (hence the show name). 

In tandem with all of this, Detective Colman (Daryl McCormack) is investigating the murder of a priest, which soon throws Lorna in his path.

The show was met with positive reviews from critics when it first debuted in 2023, toting up a 77 per cent rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

In the write-ups of the show, critics singled out Wilson’s performance as well as the handling of the serious subject matter.

The Wall Street Journal said the show ‘tightens its grip on the viewer’s neck and [moves] him toward the edge of his seat, as if to correct his posture.’

Meanwhile, The Post NZ admitted that the show is not a ‘comfortable’ watch, but said it is ‘nonetheless addictive appointment viewing’.

The Guardian review described it as ‘beautiful’ and ‘harrowing’, adding: ‘Such a rarity this – the gothic element, spilling out of Lorna’s mind and home, feels not like a bolt-on to add drama lacking elsewhere but an integral part of the story.’

The Woman in the Wall is available to watch on Netflix.