Author Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Say Nothing: A True Story of Memory and Murder in Northern Ireland” was published in 2018 and was immediately acclaimed, receiving excellent reviews, appearing on The New York Times bestseller list for weeks, and winning the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. We’re huge fans of the book: Fellow editor Jacob Hall and I have spoken about it on a couple episodes of our /Film Daily podcast, and we raved about how it told a propulsive, compelling story while also providing the necessary political and social context to understand the Troubles, a violent period of instability in Northern Ireland that lasted for decades.
Now “Say Nothing” has been adapted into a series on FX on Hulu. I’ve seen five of the nine episodes, and I’m shocked at the degree to which this adaptation manages to capture the intensity, vitality, and moral murkiness of the book. If you haven’t heard about this show — which is extremely possible, given that it didn’t seem to receive the same all-out marketing blitz that something like FX’s “Shogun” did earlier this year — I highly encourage you to check it out, because this is some of the best TV you’ll watch in 2024.
FX’s Say Nothing is an immersive exploration of the Troubles
In addition to the fantastic writing, no-nonsense direction from talented up-and-comers, and excellent performances from its sprawling ensemble cast (Lola Petticrew, Hazel Doupe, Anthony Boyle, and Josh Finan are effectively the leads, but the whole cast is top notch), one of the biggest reasons the show succeeds is because of the production design and costume design. Oftentimes in period projects like this, I get the sense that the filmmakers aren’t able to move the camera everywhere they want because modernity is encroaching onto their sets and would pop the illusion if the shot panned just a couple inches left or right at a given moment. In “Say Nothing,” the opposite is true: The show feels alive, dangerous, free, and wholly immersive — almost like you’re stepping into a documentary.
The show whisks us back to the 1960s, ’70s, and presumably beyond (I haven’t gotten that far yet) and drops us right into the conflict between the Irish Republican Army and the occupying Brits, but unfortunately, there’s also a timelessness to some of the ideas being presented here. Age-old arguments about terrorism versus freedom fighting, the oppression of colonizers, and how many lives you’re willing to take to ensure freedom are interrogated in thorny ways that can make you uncomfortable as a viewer. In a media landscape that is far too frequently content to simply feed mindless slop to audiences, this is a show that pokes and prods us in ways that I find exciting.
I spoke a little about “Say Nothing” on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below (and if you’re looking for more from Patrick Radden Keefe, his addictive podcast “Winds of Change” was one of the things that got me through 2020):
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