PICK OF DIGITAL & ON DEMAND TV

THE WONDER, NETFLIX

RISING star Florence Pugh (pictured) plays English nurse Lib Wright, sent to a 19th-century Ireland still traumatised by the Great Famine of the 1840s, to observe the ‘miracle’ of an 11-year-old girl, Anna O’Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy), who claims not to have eaten for four months. Instead, Anna says she is surviving on ‘manna from heaven’. Lib comes into conflict with the community — including Elaine Cassidy (Kila’s real-life mum) as the girl’s mother and Ciaran Hinds as the local priest — after declaring Anna’s claim impossible. This haunting drama is adapted from the 2016 novel of the same name by Irish-born writer Emma Donoghue, whose 2010 book Room was turned into an Oscarwinning film. The Wonder is based on the 19th-century phenomenon of ‘fasting girls’, whose claims to be able to live without food would garner them much attention. ‘I was intrigued by these cases, which seemed to echo medieval saints starving for penance, and modern anorexics, but weren’t exactly the same as either,’ says Donoghue.