Say Nothing

A late contender for one of the best shows of the year. .... That “Say Nothing” manages, in just nine episodes, to deliver a survey of the Troubles, a devastating true-crime case, a harrowing object lesson on hunger strikes, a drama about sisterhood, a tragedy in which movement leaders betray each other, and even, at one point, a heist, all without trivializing the suffering its protagonists caused or absolving them of their complicity — is more than impressive. It’s astonishing.

Say Nothing is spectacular television, deftly weaving multiple perspectives together in various timelines to give the viewer the full scope of the Troubles. It’s a show that doesn’t pull its punches, be it in terms of the bleakest moral nadirs of that time or in the sharply hilarious gallows humor of West Belfast. Say Nothing is propulsive, nervy, and FX’s latest must-watch masterpiece.

A layered look at a traumatic conflict with reverberating effects to this day, FX's adaptation created by Joshua Zetumer (Patriot's Day) boasts a stellar ensemble that keeps the series engaging through and through.

It is a bravura tapestry, with none of those characters underwritten and all of them superbly played.

Say Nothing doesn’t adapt some of the most intriguing turns in Keefe’s account—the mass prison hunger strike in the 1980s, the Belfast Project’s struggle to preserve the anonymity of its interviewees—and fast-forwards through years of political upheaval. In their stead, the series offers a thoughtfully constructed study of the conflict’s moral complexity.

The series streamlines much of the larger historical context and can feel claustrophobic as a result — in excluding a full picture of what British occupation materially meant in the day-to-day of West Belfast, the series fails to communicate the scale of what this history means to the region. But the show ultimately weaponizes that claustrophobia to its benefit.

Resonates not only as a gripping true-crime drama, but also as an urgently timely work of political art.

Author Patrick Radden Keefe’s award-winning dive into the nefarious activities of a handful of IRA rebels as well as the abduction of a 38-year-old Northern Ireland mom from her home in 1972 gets turned into a top-notch, tragic nine-episode FX series.

Sharp editing keeps episodes at a tight 40-45 minutes each, and each entry has a memorable, clear arc unto itself. The cast is uniformly strong, with Pettigrew and Doupe as obvious but deserved stand-outs, plus Boyle making the most of a role that pivots on its ruthless efficiency. But no matter how solidly built, “Say Nothing” was never going to be an easy watch.

Show creator Josh Zetumer, an American, makes the wise decision to closely follow Radden Keefe's blueprint for tone and structure while creating a compelling episodic structure.

What emerges is a disordered, skewed account, but a powerful one.

As an adaptation, the boldest choices in “Say Nothing” are reserved for the final episode, when the freer rein of fiction allows the show to imagine McConville’s final moments, including the identity of her killers, in more detail than Keefe ever could.

“Say Nothing” is a heavy watch, and it remains to be seen whether American viewers will be in the mood to dive into a drawn-out resistance story so soon after an election won by a governing force eager to bring to heel millions of his countrymen, whether economically or by force. But captivating performances by Peake, Petticrew, Doupe and a fiery Boyle deliver us through the darkness of the days and years captured in its nine installments.

“Say Nothing,” which begins streaming on Hulu Thursday, is, in fact, tough to watch, but for all the right reasons. The series, thanks to solid writing and even better acting, conjures many of the same emotions – anguish, dread, sorrow – as Keefe’s acclaimed 2018 book, and that’s quite an achievement.

It is upfront about its narrow focus on Jean McConville and the Price sisters and it would be a worry if viewers regarded Say Nothing as a complete A-Z of the Troubles. It is nothing of the sort. Instead, the concentration on one terrible event reveals how violence – no matter the cause – corrodes the soul and follows the living even as the dead are left forgotten in their cold, unmarked graves.

The series wobbles in how much assistance it wants to provide to viewers unfamiliar with the history of the conflict, or of Ireland itself. It’s definitely designed to be more ruminated over than binged, although FX is releasing all nine episodes as a single drop.

But whether or not this is How It Was, it’s easy enough to accept that it’s How It Might Have Been; the production and set pieces feel right, the dialogue is more speech than speeches. At the same time, because it takes place over many years, with much elided, the series can sometimes feel abstract, especially when it moves away from Dolours.

Although often bursting with style and period details, things unfold almost at a slight distance.

The problem is that, outside of an episode focused entirely on the 203-day hunger strike that Dolours and Marian staged in prison, Say Nothing keeps trying to also incorporate pieces of the larger story in ways that dilute the show’s overall impact, even when individual scenes and performances work well.

It is a beautifully acted interrogation of the power of silence, the loyalty it proves and the burden it brings. However, it feels overly sympathetic to its main characters – the sisters, Hughes and Adams.

Where the book is immensely detailed and nuanced, the series is necessarily dramatic, occasionally comic and at times glamorous, although the glamour fades as the miserable weariness of violence persists. Yet there is something discomforting in seeing such recent, unresolved history dressed up as entertainment.