Roush Review: ‘Woman in the Wall’ Delves Into Dark Mysteries of the Past
Review
The Woman In The Wall
No one sleeps easily in Showtime‘s provocative six-part Irish mystery The Woman in the Wall — especially not Lorna (the mesmerizing Ruth Wilson of Luther and The Affair fame), whose sleepwalking antics have made her something of a pariah in her small town. We first see Lorna as she awakens in the middle of a country road, and even when she’s fully conscious, she appears to be in a state of perpetual disorientation.
Lorna’s unstable state is further rattled when she receives a note saying someone has information about her daughter, who was taken from her 30 years ago (declared dead) in a notorious convent and workhouse for unwed girls, a trauma from which she has never fully recovered. A pending class-action lawsuit against these cruel “mother and baby homes” provides a backdrop to Lorna’s ordeal, which only intensifies when she awakens from one of her spells and finds an unidentified woman’s unbreathing body. Lorna makes the irrational decision to hide the body within a wall of her derelict home, at which point the surreal Poe-like intrigue deepens.
Enter Dublin detective Colman Akande (Bad Sisters’ Daryl McCormack), himself beset by nightmares stemming from his own grim childhood before he was adopted. He’s come to town to investigate the murder of a priest with whom he was acquainted in his youth. Logic and genre convention dictate that this case is likely to be connected to the mysteries of Lorna’s missing daughter and Colman’s own cloudy adoption. They make an odd couple, the seemingly deranged loose cannon that is Norma and the rogue cop unafraid to challenge state and church, and his bosses, to get to the truth.
While the crime storyline is resolved a bit too tidily, the series is most passionate about finding justice and peace for the women like Lorna who have spent their adult lives under a cloud of grief and unresolved shame.
The Woman in the Wall, Series Premiere, Friday, January 19, Paramount+ With Showtime (On-Air Debut Sunday, January 21, 9/8c, Showtime)
