The Cruelty Man – As this episode of The Woman In The Wall begins, Detective Colman Akande (Daryl McCormack) asks Lorna Brady (Ruth Wilson) where Aoife is. Lorna admits she doesn’t know. Aidan Massey (Simon Delaney) and the others arrive to collect evidence from the scene. Colman tells Aidan that she confessed. Aidan asks if that was before or after she went looking for people in the walls. He reminds Colman he told him to leave her alone. Since Colman broke in without a warrant, Aidan wants him out of his town. He asks Conor Skelly (Cillian Lenaghan) to escort Detective Akande out of Lorna’s home because they’re going to send him back to Dublin.

After the intro, Niamh (Philippa Dunne) visits Lorna and finds out what has happened. She tells Lorna that police are saying she killed someone. Lorna insists it doesn’t matter anymore because her daughter is gone. She wants to find out where they buried her daughter. Niamh suggests she should speak to James Coyle to see what he can do about any of this. She asks Lorna to do nothing and stay put for her until then. Aidan sees Lorna leaving the house so he chases her down. He warns her that she is in a bad situation after confessing to murder. Aidan would arrest her if he believed a word that came out of her mouth.

When he asks about Aoife, Lorna tells him to ask the woman who’s pretending to be Aoife’s daughter. Aidan says he is skeptical so he isn’t going to drop everything to look into it. Loran questions what good he is then. In Blackrock, Dublin, Colman enters a house and looks around. He finds a picture of himself with Father Percy (Stephen Brennan). In a flashback, they sit down together as Percy tells Colman he should be proud of himself because being a detective is a big achievement. Colman admits he is interested in finding his birth mother. He asks if there is anyone he can speak to since Lazarus House is run by the church. Percy isn’t sure he knew anyone at Lazarus House.

Percy worries Colman’s parents may feel this is a slap in the face for them. He says they’ve given Colman a good life before asking if the other woman would’ve done the same. Colman looks through paperwork from Lazarus House to see what he can find out about his birth mother. Luke Drennan (Liam Heslin) walks in and explains he has been told to keep an eye on Colman now that he is back in Dublin. Lorna walks around the cemetery hoping to find her daughter’s grave. When she sees a priest, she asks him to help. While showing her the records, the priest asks whether she has tried the county archives.

He knows the church probably has a lot to answer for after what she went through, but he’d hate to think a few rotten apples impacted her relationship with God. Lorna begins telling him about Amy Kane and the room in the convent that was used for babies born sick. The nuns would put the baby in this room and just wait without doing anything. It was called the dying room. Lorna tells him not to worry about her and God. She never met the man and none of them did. Luke tells Colman that the place was a mess with loads of prints and fibrous materials. They also found rabbit hairs. As for the blood splatter, it all belonged to Father Percy.

Colman finds a hidden phone jack and asks Luke if Percy had a phone. Although there was no phone logged in as evidence, there was one. Colman shows Luke where the cord used to be. Lorna speaks to a man about finding a burial record in the county archive. The man checks but doesn’t find a record for Agnes Brady. When Lorna asks about the hard copies, she is told everything has been digitized. She wants to look for herself only to be told no one is allowed inside without written permission. The receptionist threatens to call security when she gets upset. A young Lorna (Abby Fitz) asks Lorna if she is going to take that. The receptionist is confused when Lorna says no.

She tells him that she wants to get in there. Niamh attends an event with James Coyle (Dermot Crowley) who says the Magdalene Laundries are a stain on the nation’s history. Once he finishes his speech, Niamh asks him about Lorna Brady in private. She tells him about the death certificate for the child Lorna had at the Mother and Baby Home. Niamh wants to help her get answers. James insists they’re getting close since he has a meeting with Judge Ferguson who will recommend whether the government will recognize the convent as a laundry. He goes on to say that Judge Ferguson is very sympathetic. James thinks they need to tread carefully. It could undo the good work they’ve done if people hear about Lorna.

Meanwhile, Lorna takes a keycard and enters the archives. She leaves with a bunch of records. Colman celebrates his mom’s birthday. When Lola Akande (Chizzy Akudolu) blows out the candles, Colman has a vision featuring the father. When he wakes up from the nightmare, Lola checks on him. Colman tells her that he was in a tunnel and someone was chasing him. Lola says he had the same nightmares when they brought him home from Lazarus House. He would wake up screaming, “The Cruelty Man! Don’t let the Cruelty Man get me!” Colman asks Lola if Father Percy had something to do with Lazarus House. Lorna gets the files home where she begins scouring through them.

After looking through them, Lorna admits her daughter is not there. She begins looking through her other belongings. Colman calls Aidan who says Lorna is not doing well. Colman says he thinks the House of the Sacred Shepherd may have been operating until 1989 although they originally thought they shut down in 1979. He explains that his mom told him Father Percy put her in touch with the House of the Sacred Shepherd and he was adopted through them. That was as late as February 5, 1989. Aidan says they’re looking at a decade or so of illegal adoptions if Colman is correct. If Father Percy was involved, there is likely a motive for his murder in this somewhere.

Aidan suggests there would be more people involved in an operation of this scale. Colman tells Aidan that they all had a connection to Lazarus House which is where he was born. Lorna notices a bag sitting on a table nearby. She looks through the records in the bag.  Colman finds information about a fire at a former children’s home. He learns that Lazarus House was overseen by Bishop Brendan Rice. Lorna calls Michael’s phone and leaves a message asking for his help. Colman discovers a picture of Father Percy Sheehan and Bishop Brendan Rice together. When Michael Kearney (Mark Huberman) visits Lorna, he learns that nearly three hundred children died in the convent.

Lorna shows him the death certificates she found and says she wants to find out whether her daughter is the only one without a grave. Michael quickly agrees to help her. Colman visits Bishop Brendan Rice (Brendan Conroy) who confirms he was the Chaplain of Lazarus House for a while. Brendan can’t remember whether he met Percy there. When Colman asks him about the House of the Sacred Shepherd, Brendan says he had a very busy today and they’ll have to finish another time. Colman warns him to tell him if he was involved. Brendan calls him ungrateful and says he should understand as well as anyone. Lorna and Michael are unable to find William Doyle in their records.

They believe there are only three graves out of 298 children. Lorna wonders what they did with the bodies. She suspects they still have to be at the convent in a mass grave. Michael says they should go to the guards with this, let them take care of it, and get the heck out of this place. He invites Lorna to come to Dublin with him. Lorna can’t because she needs to find her daughter’s body. Michael asks what she is going to do. Superintendent Byrne (Eimear Morrissey) calls Colman into her office to tell him Bishop Brendan Rice made a formal complaint against him. When Colman tries to tell her what he found, she tells him to hand over everything to Drennan so he can take over from here.

Colman complains that nothing will happen because nothing ever happens. Byrne tells him to take some leave and not to return to work for a while. Colman sneaks through the gate to Lazarus House while Lorna tries to get in touch with Sister Eileen. Colman searches the abandoned building. He ends up falling into a hole that appears to be a well. Sister Eileen (Frances Tomelty) catches Lorna snooping around. Lorna asks where they buried her daughter. Eileen believes she never had a daughter because motherhood has to be earned. Lorna wants to know where her daughter’s body is and she knows Agnes isn’t the only one. She thinks Sister Eileen should be scared of her. Eileen claims she could’ve been with her daughter but chose not to.

When it was impossible for Lorna to be with her daughter, they were forced to make other arrangements. Eileen tells her to take some responsibility for herself because she failed her child. She calls Aidan to tell him Lorna is back. Colman begins panicking as he walks through a tunnel. Once Aidan arrives, Eileen tells him she has no wish to press charges. At the station, Aidan warns Lorna that this is the last time he is going to let her off the hook. He says they’ll drink tea and take her home. Lorna reveals that Clemence told her he gave him a cup of tea too. She managed to escape one day, but Aidan picked her up. He drove her there and gave her a mug of tea before driving her back.

Lorna asks if he wants to know what Sister Eileen did to her for running away. Aidan asks what he could’ve done because the girls’ families didn’t even want to take them in. Lorna gives him the list of the children of died in the convent and explains she could only find three graves. Colman makes it to his mother and tells her that he saw where he was born. He saw the tunnel from the nightmares. Lola insists they didn’t know it was real and only thought it was a dream. Colman wants to know what happened at Lazarus House. Lola says they heard rumors he was being kept separate from the others. They called it the reject room. They put him in there with the other nonwhite children, disabled children, and traveler children.

Lola says no mother should have to say this to her child. Colman says he isn’t her child before asking about his real mother. Lola reveals her name is Catherine Ivers, but she doesn’t know if she ever tried to find him. The following day, Colman tries to get records pertaining to Catherine and Colman Ivers from 1989. He looks through the records before leaving. Colman visits Lorna and finds the graffiti outside her residence. He goes inside and tells Lorna he needs to show her something. Lorna is surprised to see a death certificate in his name even though he is alive.

 

The Woman In The Wall Review

The fourth episode of The Woman In The Wall was effective at pushing the story forward and revealing a lot of details about the past. For instance, we learned more about Colman’s time at Lazarus House and how he was staying in the reject room because no one wanted to adopt him. Lorna went through an array of emotions as she suspected her daughter was dead, but received hope at the end of the episode.

Certain things were predictable and even cliché. Colman being told to take leave from his job and eventually teaming up with Lorna fit into this category although many viewers can overlook the show’s predictable side. The performances are strong enough to add legitimacy to the story and the camerawork was mostly good besides some unnecessary shakiness at times.

In some regards, this isn’t a story to be believed even though it could’ve been. It is unfortunate the series didn’t walk a straighter line because it would’ve been more impactful if it was grounded in reality. Many of the details are believable and even proven real, but too many involving Lorna are not. A bigger issue is the episode count. This never needed to be six episodes because it feels stretched thin right now.

If the final payoff is worth it, it may be easy to overlook the tedious pace though. However, it will take a great deal of patience to reach the finale. While it isn’t outstanding, The Woman In The Wall is watchable with moments of emotional significance scattered throughout. This episode scores a 6 out of 10.

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