Stories beyond the script: Hugging our little destiny again, FX’s fearless Say Nothing

“By destroying Ireland’s people, they destroy Ireland,” wrote John Hume about the Provisional IRA in 1989, just as he was about to begin secret peace talks with Gerry Adams. After I finished the new nine-part FX drama series Say Nothing on Disney +, those words struck me in a new way. The show connects many historical times, places and characters with a horror story. That of a widowed mother of ten, Jean McConville, and of the night she was taken away by the Provisional IRA. This is not an easy, or even in a conventual sense, entertaining show to watch. For everybody in my hometown of Belfast and the North of Ireland in general, it has been a kind of pandora’s box that has opened up old wounds and brought back troubling memories.

The great trick of Say Nothing, and the most effective part of it, is its depiction of the outcome of violence on its victims

Think of one of those Rorschach tests where the viewer sees only what they want and expect to see. I’ve seen near ridiculous TikTok edits over the past few days, glamourising the stunning looks of the young actors for what is effectively clunky Republican propaganda. The same can be said for the British response. One Guardian reviewer, Lucy Mangan, argued that the show does “not focus sharply enough on the suffering inflicted by the central characters” and “feels overly sympathetic to its main characters.” The characters in question are Dolours (Lola Petticrew) and Marian (Hazel Doupe) Price, two politically active sisters from West Belfast. The sisters are disillusioned by internment without trial and the civil rights campaign’s commitment to non-violence, and become the few leading female volunteers. Concurrently, the lives of Brendan ‘the dark’ Hughes (Anthony Boyle) and Gerry Adams (Josh Finan), two young IRA commanders, are presented as they witness the girls’ meteoric rise in the Republican movement, concluding with the 1973 Old Bailey Bombing and their subsequent Hunger strike in Brixton Men’s Prison. It is hard to see how some have come to such black and white conclusions over the show’s depiction of history. If this piece of drama does anything, it shows how four young people, energised and radicalised by fervent Republican ideology and state violence, turned their lives into tragedies. The great trick of Say Nothing, and the most effective part of it, is its depiction of the outcome of violence on its victims, the Price sisters, Hughes, and even Adams. It would be ignorant not to note that Adams has always denied every being a member of the Provisional IRA. This disclaimer appears at the end of every episode.

Questions of morality present themselves throughout the show. Though the first five episodes retain a lively, fast paced and action-packed tempo, there is something rotten within this armed struggle. Episode Three ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ may start with Dolours flirting with a British soldier to get past the border, with Marian and Joe Lynskey (Adam Best) laughing at her outrageousness, but after the credits, an RUC officer cleans up the bloody mess of a bombed grocers shop. The sword of Damocles, which hangs over the whole show, is the framing device of the Belfast Project, with an older Dolours (Maxine Peake) and an older Hughes (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) giving recorded testimony of the history that is unravelled before us. However, these two narratives of the young and the old, that in the first five episodes seem poles apart from each other, begin to clash and merge once the uncomfortable truths around McConville’s disappearance start to be set free.

Regardless of the actions they take, each of the main characters are given time to be heard

Although these clashing plots might seem to be a recipe for disaster, showrunner Josh Zetumer is able to balance the stories and situations well, having them come together in a devastating yet meaningful way. Series writers Clare Barron, Joe Murtagh and Kirsten Sheridan keep the viewer on the edge of their seat, never wasting an opportunity for dramatic catharsis. In the opening scene of Episode Eight ‘I Lay Waiting’ an older Adams (Michael Colgan) meets with Father Alec Reid (Ian McElhinney) to relay a secret message, likely to John Hume, over what would become to be known as the Hume-Adams Talks, the major turning point in the conflict. A lesser series would display Adams as wholly moralistic and determined in his devotion to peace. Say Nothing takes this small scene, and transforms it into a meditation between the neurotic Adams and the calm and collected Reid. While the Catholic priest lays out the painful reality of the armed campaign, Adams says bluntly “Honestly Father, all they’re achieving at this stage is killing my voters.” The power within that line, how much it portrays about the older Adams’ narcissistic personality and priorities, is what makes Say Nothing a great modern tragedy. Every life shown is given a proper story. Regardless of the actions they take, each of the main characters are given time to be heard. This is what makes the last couple of episodes such a distressing watch. Seeing Dolours and Marian, once so young and wide eyed, having to deal with the outworking of their past actions makes us feel for them even more. I will not spoil the ending over what happens to McConville – all I can say is that the sensitivity shown to such a disturbing act is worthy of the buildup portrayed.

The central horror of McConville’s murder and those of the other Disappeared act as a metaphor for a coming to terms with war and suffering that seems to surpass all understanding

Ultimately, Say Nothing is a drama made to speak at full throat. This is not an aesthetic choice by the production, but a moral one. The central horror of McConville’s murder and those of the other Disappeared act as a metaphor for a coming to terms with war and suffering that seems to surpass all understanding. Anthony ‘Mackers’ McIntyre’s (Seamus O’Hara) oral history project allowed Dolours and Brendan to exorcise some of their past ghosts by merely saying what happened to them and to their victims. Say Nothing gives an opportunity for its audience to do something similar: not to ignore the past, but to take it in with open arms, for all its pained humanity, and to greet it as an old companion, continuing to move into the future.