Say Nothing Is a Fearless Adaptation of a Remarkable Book

We get it: There’s an overwhelming number of television shows right now. The streaming landscape is an impractical maze, and the good stuff easily gets lost in the shuffle. But most of us can still find one show that cuts through the noise. We call this “appointment viewing” — or the time you carve out in your busy schedule to watch the show you’ll want to unpack the next day with your friends while it’s still on your mind. Tune in here each month to read what writer Michel Ghanem, a.k.a. @tvscholar, deems worthy of a group-chat deep dive.

We’ve covered a few historical dramas in “Appointment Viewing,” including Showtime’s sexy Fellow Travelers and FX’s Emmy-winning Shōgun. This month, a new one premieres on FX: Say Nothing, a captivating limited series based on a nonfiction book that brings a rarely depicted slice of Irish history to our small screens.

So there’s a new Irish show on TV?

Say Nothing is a historical limited series based on the 2018 nonfiction book of the same name by journalist Patrick Radden Keefe. Conflict between Irish Catholics and U.K. Protestants had been ongoing for centuries; by the late 1960s, the violence had escalated among the Catholics and Protestant loyalists and thus began the tumultuous period known as the Troubles. The series spans around four decades of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and its aftermath, covering the latter half of the 20th century.

On the show, we mostly follow the lives of Dolours (played by an unflinching Lola Petticrew) and Marian Price (Hazel Doupe), two young-adult sisters who join the Provisional Irish Republican Army (a designated terrorist organization in the U.K.). We follow their lives as they participate in IRA activities in Belfast, conducting covert operations, bombings, and everything else you might expect from a violent fight for liberation. The sisters work closely with Brendan “the Dark” Hughes (Anthony Boyle) and Gerry Adams (Josh Finan), two IRA leaders under constant pursuit by British authorities trying to rule out dissent (Rory Kinnear plays yet another villainous role as one of these British commanders). Adams, who eventually runs for political office in the U.K. parliament, denies his involvement with the IRA to this day.

The IRA’s secretive activities were finally revealed in the Belfast Project, an oral history from the aughts that inspired Keefe to write his book, and it is a pivotal part of the show’s denouement. With the help of Keefe as executive producer, Say Nothing is a stunning television debut for Joshua Zetumer as a first-time showrunner with captivating performances all around.

How can I watch it?

All nine episodes of FX’s Say Nothing will be released on Hulu on Thursday, November 14. This is a pivot in strategy from when FX released the recent historical drama Shōgun on a weekly basis. Say Nothing is quite a meaty binge for one sitting, and my advice would be to break it down into more digestible chunks: Most episodes are around 42 minutes long and can be watched easily in pairs. However, you may want to watch the heavy sixth episode, which narrows the focus on Dolours and Marian during the most challenging time of their tenure with the IRA, on its own. It’s one of the best episodes of television I’ve seen this year. The last two and a half episodes see the older cast take on the characters full time as they each contend with the past after peace is negotiated. Maxine Peake, whom you may recognize from Black Mirror and The Bisexual, is a standout here playing Dolours in the later years of her life.

There haven’t been many shows that look at this period of Irish history in such an unwavering way. Derry Girls, a charming Netflix comedy that ran for three seasons, followed a group of high-schoolers during the final stretch of the Troubles, but the actual conflict mostly occurs on the outskirts of their coming-of-age shenanigans. Derry Girls director Michael Lennox directs four episodes of Say Nothing, but he’s dealing with a very different tone here; Say Nothing may have the occasional joke, but it’s decidedly more serious in subject matter.

But if it’s a historical drama, won’t I be bored?

Don’t worry, Say Nothing had me hooked within the first 15 minutes. The first episode begins with members of the IRA knocking on the door of an unassuming widowed mother of ten before taking her away unceremoniously. The stressful opening scene prepares the viewer for the conflict to come — the Troubles were more than Molotov cocktails and guns rattling into the night; they were also about the IRA’s paranoia around “touts,” Irish slang for “informants.” Seemingly a side plot in the early episodes, the mother in question (Jean McConville) becomes pivotal in the later years of the war for each of the characters as they reflect on actions they took after pledging undying loyalty to the IRA.

For Dolours in particular, the toll of liberation and the cost of silence carry a heavy burden. She is a fascinating character study as a protagonist who grew up receiving tips on how to survive interrogation from her father and a disabled aunt who lost her arms and sight to the cause, visceral reminders of Ireland’s history under British colonial rule. As she says in the first episode, “The thing about Irish people: We’ve been arguing over the same shite for 800 years.” There’s obviously more to the Troubles than her experience, but through her lens, Say Nothing never feels too sprawling or confusing.

In the past year alone, there have been at least half a dozen shows set during World War II on top of the dozens of stories already told from that era. I found it so refreshing to experience a new-to-me piece of history — especially one that captures the nuances of a militant resistance. We live in an era that calls to mind a new version of McCarthyism in the West for those speaking out on the atrocities being committed against Arabs in the Middle East, and Say Nothing prompts the viewer to question which parts of history are suppressed to favor colonial legacies: The Troubles were certainly not taught in my history classes growing up, and its stories were only tangentially addressed on Netflix’s The Crown. From the phenomenal casting of lesser-known actors to the captivating performances, Say Nothing joins shows like Chernobyl and Band of Brothers in the pantheon of great historical adaptations. It is always a gift to have ambitious television to watch, especially when it’s this good.