The Woman in the Wall creator reluctant to work on thrilling BBC drama | TV & Radio | Showbiz & TV

The Woman in the Wall’s writer and creator Joe Murtagh admitted he “tried not to write” about the Magdalene Laundries but was struck by how many people hadn’t heard of the shocking stories.

Speaking to Express.co.uk and other publications about the upcoming BBC drama, he explained: “So I watched The Magdalene Sisters and I looked into this and I was just absolutely horrified and couldn’t believe that this had happened.

“I watched The Magdalene Sisters and had this really uneasy feeling throughout watching it – did this as this actually happened to people?

“And then reading into like Jesus Christ, yeah, yes, it has.

“It has happened to more than these four women in the film.

“And all the way up to 1996 when the last one was closed.

“So it was just, you know, an eye-opening experience realising how this horrific thing happened.

“But the thing that was more horrifying was that I hadn’t heard of this and every single person I mentioned it to hadn’t, and that’s still true today.”

Confessing he was reluctant to write about it, he continued: “And I kept trying not to write about it and tried to convince myself not to and give myself plenty of reasons not to.

“And still people weren’t knowing about it.

“So it was still this hidden bit of history that every time I mentioned or every time I went to like pitch some project I’d end up talking about this other one.

“And I kept mentioning the Magdalene Laundries and getting that same reaction, ‘What is that?’

“And so that kind of superseded it, that frustration.”

While the character of Lorna and the murder mystery she gets wrapped up in is fictional, The Woman in the Wall explores the real-life horrors of the Magdalene Laundries that were used to punish “fallen women”.

An estimated 30,000 were confined in the Irish institutions and in 1993 the unmarked graves of 155 women were uncovered in the grounds of one of the establishments.

Unmarried mothers were also forced to give up their newborn babies in the laundries.

In 2013, a formal state apology was issued and a compensation scheme was later set up by the Irish Government.

The Woman in the Wall launches on BBC One on Sunday at 9.05pm.