************SPOILERS MAYBE************
Not since 'Bottom' when I was six have I felt this strongly about telly.It was on late and when it finished I just went and sat in my room.I couldn't sleep.I couldn't swallow.I thought I was going mad.Why hadn't I known? Why hadn't anyone told me that in Ireland in the 60s the church and state could imprison a woman for as long as they damn pleased for being raped at the wrong time of the month? Magdalen Laundries, where you sent your dirty linen to be washed by women who were pregnant out of wedlock.Who couldn't leave unless two men signed them out.Whose babies were given to nice rich families soon as they were born.Well, not THAT soon.They had long enough to get attatched to them.Broken glass and barbed wire lined the walls.Nothing was done to the babies fathers.Now I knew. As well as being a heart and brain tearing education,Sinners is well made drama.Great performances from everyone, including Ruth McCabe as the evil mother superior,Anne-Marie Duff as the new girl who starts to rail against the system that she always presumed knew what was best,and Elaine Symons, the bitchy ditz from Custer's Last Standup who was always funnier than her brother,here an 8-months-gone teenager jiving through the wrung-out hell of the laundry to Cilla Black with her best mate (who gets sent somewhere even worse when Theresa advises her to tell someone the truth about the resident priest.) By the late 70s most of the Magdalen Laundries-most of them-had closed down.Partly because of feminism,but mainly because by then most people had acess to a washing machine.
Not since 'Bottom' when I was six have I felt this strongly about telly.It was on late and when it finished I just went and sat in my room.I couldn't sleep.I couldn't swallow.I thought I was going mad.Why hadn't I known? Why hadn't anyone told me that in Ireland in the 60s the church and state could imprison a woman for as long as they damn pleased for being raped at the wrong time of the month? Magdalen Laundries, where you sent your dirty linen to be washed by women who were pregnant out of wedlock.Who couldn't leave unless two men signed them out.Whose babies were given to nice rich families soon as they were born.Well, not THAT soon.They had long enough to get attatched to them.Broken glass and barbed wire lined the walls.Nothing was done to the babies fathers.Now I knew. As well as being a heart and brain tearing education,Sinners is well made drama.Great performances from everyone, including Ruth McCabe as the evil mother superior,Anne-Marie Duff as the new girl who starts to rail against the system that she always presumed knew what was best,and Elaine Symons, the bitchy ditz from Custer's Last Standup who was always funnier than her brother,here an 8-months-gone teenager jiving through the wrung-out hell of the laundry to Cilla Black with her best mate (who gets sent somewhere even worse when Theresa advises her to tell someone the truth about the resident priest.) By the late 70s most of the Magdalen Laundries-most of them-had closed down.Partly because of feminism,but mainly because by then most people had acess to a washing machine.