Joe Murtagh has written a drama fuelled by outrage, informed by horror. The Woman In The Wall tells the shameful real-life story of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes – but wraps up this vital account in a genre-hopping, wickedly funny, character-led series that veers from offbeat black comedy to crime caper to psychological horror.
The Magdalene Laundries were state-sponsored, church-run institutions in which women were forced to work for no money, in near silence, kept away from the wider world. Their crimes? Some had been sexually abused, others had been raped, still more were locked up because they had a reputation for promiscuity.
Alongside these, Mother and Baby Homes were similarly cruel church-run institutions, in which babies were forcibly removed from unmarried mothers and put up for
