Name: The Trial of Louise Woodward
Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Meghann Fahy

In 1997, an eighteen-year-old au pair named Louise Woodward stood trial in Massachusetts for the death of a baby left in her care, and two nations sat in front of their televisions at the same time, watching. The case predated social media by a decade, but it ran exactly like one: a transatlantic argument conducted in real time, 24 hours a day, with verdict-watchers on both sides of the Atlantic who had already made up their minds before the jury came back. Matthew Barry, whose HBO series Industry has spent three seasons dissecting the way British ambition functions inside American systems, has found his natural material.

Actress Meghann Fahy, who stars in HBO limited series The Trial of Louise Woodward — Photo: Niko Vermeer / CC BY-SA 2.0

HBO has ordered The Trial of Louise Woodward, a five-episode limited series starring two-time Emmy nominee Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus, Sirens). Susanne Bier — the Danish director whose Academy and Emmy Award-winning credits include The Night Manager and the forthcoming Practical Magic 2 — will direct all five episodes and serve as executive producer alongside showrunner Matthew Barry (Industry, The Guest). Big Light Productions founder Frank Spotnitz, Emily Feller, Tobi de Graaff and Antoine Douaihy will also serve as executive producers. Production begins this August; release is expected in 2027.

What makes Barry’s framing sharp is its insistence that this is not a cold case: it is a live one. The Woodward trial arrived at a structural hinge in media history — cable news had just found its cadence, satellite feeds could place a courtroom in Newton, Massachusetts, inside every British living room, and the architecture of public opinion was being built, for the first time, at the speed of broadcast. In Barry’s words, the trial raised “profound questions about childcare, working mothers, class, and the role of an emerging 24/7 media.” Thirty years on, he argues, those questions have not gone away.

The appointment of Bier to direct all five episodes is the structural choice that gives the project its particular shape. She made her name on intimate Scandinavian dramas before graduating to the transatlantic register of The Night Manager, where she managed exactly the tension this material demands: a public spectacle held against the private interiority of the people inside it. Meghann Fahy, who carries the lead role, arrives here having established herself as one of prestige television’s most reliable emotional presences across The White Lotus Season 3 and Sirens. The combination points to a series built on precision rather than scale.

The Trial of Louise Woodward will stream on HBO and Max. Production begins August 2026 ahead of an expected 2027 release.

Tags: HBO, true crime, Meghann Fahy, Susanne Bier, Louise Woodward, Matthew Barry