Ruth Wilson’s ‘The Woman in the Wall’ unpacks a ‘grim history’: review

“The Woman in the Wall,” starring Ruth Wilson, combines elements of “Broadchurch,” “True Detective” and “Twin Peaks” with an idyllic Irish setting.

The results are tonally all over the place, but it’s intriguing. 

Airing Sunday nights at 9 p.m. (Showtime) and streaming on Paramount+ (it aired on the BBC in the UK), the story is set in 2015 in the fictional town of Kilkinure. 

It opens up with Lorna (Wilson) asleep and waking up in the middle of a quiet country lane. Nobody is around except for grass and cows, and there’s a spot of blood on her nightgown. 

When she goes home, she finds a knife lodged into a painting of Jesus Christ on her wall, and removes it, saying, “That’s not good. Sorry, Jesus,” which adds to the whimsical, dark fairytale feel of the opening sequence. 

However, after that surreal start (and a few other weird intervals), “The Woman in the Wall” takes a more grounded turn toward a detective show, and dives into some “ripped from the headlines” social issues that unpack a grim history.

The story also follows Detective Colman Akande (Daryl McCormack) in Dublin, who is investigating the murder of his childhood priest, Father Percy Sheehan. 

The case leads him to Kilkinure, where his story dovetails with Lorna’s. 

It turns out that when Lorna was 15 and pregnant, she was sent to one of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, a real church-run institution where so-called “immoral women,” such as pregnant teens out-of-wedlock, endured harrowing living conditions, frequent abuse and harsh work.

And, Lorna’s baby was taken away from her. 

Father Percy was involved in this group home and police become suspicious of Lorna and other women who spent their youth there.

Making matters more complicated, this is a bad time for Lorna to attract attention from authorities, since she also finds a dead woman in her home in a crime that’s seemingly unrelated to Father Percy’s murder.

Since Lorna has had sleepwalking incidents after her teen trauma, she doesn’t know if she’s responsible for the corpse. 

She also gets a hint about her long-lost daughter’s whereabouts, and her past connects to Detective Akande’s in an unexpected way. 

Although all of this is interesting, it doesn’t always mesh together neatly. 

At times, the show’s combination of police procedural combines awkwardly with whimsical elements like the surreal and darkly comic opening sequence. 

And, while the show’s look at the real tragic history of Magdalene Laundries is appropriately disturbing, that “ripped from the headlines” material doesn’t always blend together well with the rest of the series’ subject matter.

But the disparate plotlines are interesting, even when they don’t blend. The scenery of quaint small-town Ireland is gorgeous. And Wilson, 42, who won a Golden Globe for “The Affair,” delivers a strong performance of a woman who is seething with anger and trauma — while unraveling at the seams. 

“The Woman in the Wall” is a show that feels like it doesn’t quite know what it’s aiming to be and throwing a lot of elements at the wall to see what sticks.

That does, however, also slot into the tradition of crime drama procedurals with social issues — “True Detective,” AMC’s “Dark Winds.”

The show is messy, but it’s never boring.