
The Light in the Hall, Channel 4’s latest crime thriller, portrays a grieving mother (Joanna Scanlan) who is still plagued by the past.
Sharon Roberts (Scanlan) is fighting to move on 18 years after her daughter Ela (Ella Peel) vanished from their house in the Welsh valleys.
While Joe Pritchard (Iwan Rheon), a quiet gardener, confessed to her murder after her DNA was discovered in his trailer, he has been unable to tell Sharon where Ela’s body is.
Sharon is shocked to learn that Joe has spent his sentence in prison and will be released, doing whatever it takes to seek answers.
Meanwhile, Ela’s childhood friend Cat Donato (Alexandra Roach), now a journalist, is looking for answers when she returns to her hometown to investigate the crime for an article.
Regina Moriarty, creator and writer of The Light in the Hall, discussed the series’ inspiration and whether it was based on a true murder.

Regina, who formerly works as a probation officer before switching to screenwriting, explained: ‘It wasn’t inspired by a particular crime. But there have been a few cases where murderers haven’t disclosed the whereabouts of the body after being convicted.
‘There have been a few cases like that, that I’ve heard about and it’s one of those things that kind of stuck in my head, because I just thought that must be the worst thing ever to know that somebody knows.
‘And also, just to not know where your loved one is, I can’t imagine it. It lodged in my brain.’

She continued: ‘It got me thinking about when criminals do come out of prison, how do you kind of cope with that? And how do you ever move on – the idea that people should perhaps not move on, but move forward and get on with their lives?
‘Then the idea of somebody being released from prison would be like a bomb, really, in your life. And that’s where the germ of the idea came from.
‘I just thought was such an awful thing. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. And so it came from there.’
The Light in the Hall is available to stream on All4.