Hidden SECRETS

RUTH WILSON on exploring the legacy of one of Ireland's most shocking scandals

- CAREN CLARK

THE WOMAN IN THE WALL

NEW SUNDAY, 9.05PM, & MONDAY, 9PM, BBC1 THRILLER

Trauma from the past casts a long and devastating shadow in BBC1's new thriller, The Woman in the Wall. Set in 2015, the six-part series sees Ruth Wilson (His Dark Materials) play disturbed Lorna Brady, who lives in the small (fictional) town of Kilkinure in western Ireland.

When Lorna was a teenager, she fell pregnant and was sent to the local convent, which was later suspected of being one of the notorious, Catholic-run Magdalene Laundries, where 'fallen women' were shut away and subjected to a harsh regime of punishing work.

Lorna's ordeal has left her prone to sleepwalking and unsettling behaviour, and she is further troubled when she now receives an anonymous note claiming to know what befell her baby, who was taken away at birth.

But Lorna's mission to learn more quickly goes awry, and when she wakes one morning to find the body of a mysterious woman in her home, she panics that she might have unwittingly committed murder.

As she tries to piece together what happened, dogged detective Colman Akande (Peaky Blinders star Daryl McCormack), who has a difficult past of his own, is keen to find out what Lorna knows about the killing of a Dublin priest who appears to have had links to Kilkinure.

Here, Ruth, 41, talks to TV Times about the complex series...

What appealed to you about this thriller?