The Trailer for 'The Woman in the Wall' Promises a Dangerous Search for a Dark Truth

Showtime's The Woman in the Wall is hardly the first story that has flavored a traditional murder mystery with serious Gothic vibes and black humor, but what will likely set the series apart for many viewers is its use of those familiar tropes to explore a very unfamiliar story. (And one of the most shocking and inhumane scandals in Ireland's history.) 

Set in the small fictional Irish town of Kilkinure, the series stars Ruth Wilson (His Dark Materials) as Lorna, a woman who wakes one morning to discover a corpse in her house. Horrifyingly, she has no idea who the dead woman is, how the body came to be in her home, or if she was somehow involved in the stranger's death. This is because Lorna suffers from extreme bouts of sleepwalking, a manifestation of leftover trauma from when she was forced to live at the town convent and saw her daughter, Agnes, taken away from her after her birth. 

During these sleepwalking episodes, Lorna tends to do dangerous, sometimes even dark, things, behavior that has earned her a reputation among the townspeople for being "not right in the head". So much so that it's not exactly a stretch that she's suspect in this murder, even if the investigation seems as though it will likely interfere with her own search for the daughter she lost. 

Though the trailer hints at the existence of the infamous Magdalene Laundries —  religious houses run by the Catholic Church that essentially incarcerated "fallen women" in Ireland between the 18th and 20th centuries — it doesn't make direct reference to the institutions or the breadth of their traumatic impact on women's lives. It does refer to mother and baby houses and missing children, but for a more direct history of the institution, which punished women who were accused of adultery, promiscuity, prostitution, and same-sex attraction along with those who found themselves pregnant out of wedlock, we'll likely have to turn to the show itself. 

Instead, the two-minute (!!) clip leans into the show's dark atmosphere, focusing on the violent incidents that seem to haunt Lorna's sleepwalking episodes and hinting that she may not always be the most reliable of narrators. 

"You see her on a mission," Wilson tells Entertainment Weekly. I"t's why I loved her — she's someone that is a survivor, and because she is an outsider, too, she in some ways hasn't got anything left to lose, so she's going to fight for justice. So, initially, as an audience you'll think maybe she's in an act of revenge or she's a murderer, but as you watch the series, you come to realize that she's on a greater mission than that."

Alongside Wilson, the series stars Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders) as Detective Colman Akande, a man with haunting secrets of his own who is on Lorna's tail for a crime seemingly unrelated to the body she has discovered in her house. As Colman searches for a killer and Lorna searches for her daughter, their paths repeatedly cross in unexpected ways.

The ensemble cast also features Simon Delaney (Inside Man), Philippa Dunne (Bodies), Mark Huberman (Vikings: Valhalla), Hilda Fay (Let the Wrong One In), Frances Tomelty (All Creatures Great and Small), and Dermot Crowley (Luther: The Fallen Sun).

The Woman in the Wall is created by BAFTA winner Joe Murtagh (Gangs of London). All six episodes were written by Murtagh, with helming duties split between directors Harry Wootliff (His Dark Materials) and Rachna Suri (Children of Men). Murtagh, Wilson, and Wootliff executive produce, along with Simon Maxwell (Deep State), Sam Lavender (Saint Maud), with Lucy Richer for the BBC. 

The Woman in the Wall will be available to stream for Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers on Friday, January 19, before broadcasting on Sunday, January 21 on Showtime.