This fictional story was inspired - says writer Murtagh - by 'a sense of outrage... In order to tell a story about Magdalene Laundries, I wanted to tell it in such a way that it would reach as wide an audience as possible. And so, I leaned away from doing a straightforward drama or social-realist peace, and I wanted to kind of blend it with genre, partly because that’s also my natural sensibilities as a writer. That’s the kind of stuff I like to write and the kind of stuff that I like to watch. But it also felt like an interesting challenge to try and tell a compelling ‘whodunnit’ crime drama, not just in a way that would sort of get the issues we explore out to as many people as possible, but in a way that it would hold its own too.'
Murtagh wrote Calm with Horses too.
The acting's fabulous too, and not only Ruth Wilson, who often doesn't even seem like her. Daryl McCormack's also great, who we knew from the Emma Thompson film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande but was also in Pixie and Bad Sisters. Then I don't know where they found this other crop of great Irish actors including Garda Simon Delaney and Cillian Lenaghan, Abby Fitz (younger Wilson), Philippa Dunne (pregnant friend), Hilda Fay (the other messed up one), Helen Roche and Anne Kent (older friends), Mark Huberman (old school friend), Michael O'Kelly, Ardal O'Hanlon, Frances Tomelty (evil nun), Dermot Crowley.
We can't hold a single director responsible for the ensemble either as in current BBC style it had several (and had a writer's room beside). But we can and should definitely praise the great Si Bell who photographed four of the six episodes (and Steven Ferguson who did the other two in the same style).
Si does great stuff with flashlights:
Steve did these two:
Good sound design (Robert Brazier) and music (David Holmes, Brian Irvine).
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