Television: The BBC’s hysterically overcooked Magdalene-laundry series is like a reboot of EastEnders’ donkey-in-the-pub episode
Then there is Ruth Wilson, as Lorna Brady, a woman whom the townsfolk regard as lovably unhinged but who has a dark past, having been shipped to a Magdalene laundry when she became pregnant as a teenager. Wilson is 41, so her character’s Magdalene experiences presumably occurred in the couple of years around 1990. The laundries still existed, just about, back then.
That same priest turns up dead in the present day in Dublin. His murder is investigated by Daryl McCormack’s stylish Garda detective. He wears an unlikely earring, the BBC presumably unaware three Garda recruits were recently sent home for having tattoos that would have been visible when they were in uniform. Meanwhile, Lorna is revealed to have kept an old woman boarded up in a crevice in her living room.
Wilson is a big name. What she isn’t is a natural-born mimic. Her Irish accent runs aground on the rocks of the show’s stereotypes. As with everyone else, she is required to say “me” instead of “my”. And to drop the letter “G” from the end of her sentences, if you’re gettin’ me drift. And then there’s the constant use of expletives by every single character, even the well-spoken woman who wants the laundry survivors to speak about their experiences.
This comes across as a winking way of signalling the natives’ uncouthness and inability to control and properly express their emotions – ancient caricature repackaged for Generation Bingewatch. It’s the Beeb doing The Banshees of Inisherin. Or rebooting itsMurtagh has done his research, speaking to survivors of the mother-and-baby homes. The Woman in the Wall is respectful of their traumas and damning towards the society that looked the other way when they were locked up.
These are our demons. We should be the ones confronting them. You might similarly ask why the BBC isn’t making ripe murder mysteries about the UK’s own, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, many involving the Church of England and Salvation Army. Or would that be too close to home? The Woman in the Wall is due to air on the Showtime network in the United States, so its cliches will be broadcast across the US, too. American audiences will likely lap it up.
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