\n<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the much more entertaining murder mystery, in which one or two people have been killed, or perhaps none. A priest once posted to Kilkinure is found dead in his Dublin home, and suspicion falls on the protesting women. At about the same time, Lorna hits her head in a pub and wakes up at home, to find a dead woman propped against the wall of her sitting room. Lorna sees a lot of people who aren\u2019t there, so we have questions about this plot strand, but there\u2019s no doubt that what we see her do with the body is not an acceptable solution to the situation.<\/p>\n
Murtaugh, greatly abetted by Wilson, balances the heaviness of his material with a humor and a lightness of spirit that make \u201cThe Woman in the Wall\u201d a brisk, engaging production. A detective from Dublin (played by Daryl McCormack of \u201cGood Luck to You, Leo Grande\u201d) who knew the priest and has his own history with the mother and child homes comes to Kilkinure to big-foot the local cops (Simon Delaney and Cillian Lenaghan, both charming), and their sparring is consistently amusing. Lorna, meanwhile, goes on a dogged, low-level crime spree \u2014 some breaking and entering, some theft, a touch of arson \u2014 in the service of investigating her daughter\u2019s fate, eventually joining forces with the Dublin detective when she gets better results than the police.<\/p>\n
Murtaugh avoids dourness to the end, but in the last couple of episodes he falls into a different trap: the story suddenly slides into melodrama, and some of the solutions to the mysteries are a little hard to countenance. An American viewer could wonder if either the humorous edge or the melodramatic flourishes would have been present if the show had been made by Irish creators \u2014 Murtaugh, both of his directors, the majority of the writers and Wilson were all born in England, and Wilson\u2019s Irish accent sounds like a work in progress.<\/p>\n
Her performance is crackerjack straight through, though, whether she\u2019s insouciantly hefting an ax or, in a particularly vivid example of Lorna\u2019s nerve, putting a cigarette in her mouth and lighting it with a welding torch. Making it to the end will reward you with a piercing moment from Wilson that goes some way toward redeeming the latter episodes\u2019 histrionics. And the closing credits offer a bonus: a few bars of a haunting, unreleased number, \u201cThe Magdalene Song,\u201d that Sinead O\u2019Connor recorded shortly before her death which dovetails with Wilson\u2019s performance. \u201cI\u2019m everything a woman\u2019s not supposed to be,\u201d she sings. \u201cThat\u2019s why they took my children off of me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n