Belfast has become a familiar place on our screens over the past decade, serving as a noir-ish (and often uncredited) backdrop to hits such as Line of Duty and The Fall. Yet with a few notable exceptions such as gritty police drama Blue Lights there has been a reluctance to delve into the city’s tumultuous recent history as a flashpoint for the Troubles – the 30-year conflict that claimed more than 3,500 lives and inflicted societal scars that cut deep to this day.
But it’s that violent history that Disney Plus’s new visceral, gripping drama Say Nothing unpacks. It’s a high-octane dramatisation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2018 non-fiction bestseller and over nine episodes tells the story of mother-of-10 Jean McConville who was abducted from the Republican heart of West Belfast and subsequently murdered in December 1972.
The events are told through the eyes of Dolours Price, a glamorous Provisional IRA operative best known for attempting to blow up the Old Bailey in 1973 and later for marrying actor Stephen Rea. She is played in middle age by Maxine Peake, where she is interviewed by an academic compiling an oral history of the Troubles, and as a misty-eyed young revolutionary by a scene-stealing Lola Petticrew.
The youthful Dolours is our entry point into West Belfast in the early 70s when the Troubles were in the process of becoming the UK’s very own Vietnam War. Dolours and her younger sister Marian (Hazel Doupe) are introduced as idealistically peaceful protesters who believe equality for Catholics can be achieved through non-violent action. But the Price sisters have a change of heart when loyalist thugs chaperoned by the Royal Ulster Constabulary ambush their civil rights march. Dolours and Marian conclude that violence is the only answer – and are soon recruited to the Provo’s D-Company, a notorious hit squad operating out of West Belfast.
Early on, there seems to be a real possibility of Say Nothing turning into Trainspotting with Semtex instead of heroin. One raucous scene sees Dolours and Marian rob a bank dressed as nuns while their dashing commanding officer, Brendan “Darkie” Hughes (Anthony Boyle, rocking an impressive 70s moustache), is chased through Belfast’s backstreets by the “Brits”. Chuck in Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life” on the soundtrack and nobody would blink.
It’s thrilling – but it isn’t the whole story, and the series pulls the rug out from under both Dolours and us when we see the conflict through the eyes of the McConville family, victims of the Provo’s Stasi-like culture of secrecy and their brutality towards anyone suspected of being a “tout” gathering intelligence for the British. We see Jean taken away by an IRA squad (including Delours) and later follow her grown-up children’s campaign to discover her fate and recover her remains.
Those who remember the dark days of the conflict will sit up and pay attention when a young actor who bears an astonishing resemblance to future Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams shows up. It is indeed a youthful Adams, depicted with remarkable veracity by English-born Josh Finan. Adams has always insisted he was never a member of the Provisional IRA and had no involvement in McConville’s disappearance, and a statement to that effect follows each episode. But Say Nothing blatantly and bravely contradicts his denials and portrays him as a Provo puppet master, cooly pulling the strings.
Say Nothing isn’t perfect – the modern scenes of middle-aged Maxine processing her guilt for her complicity in the IRA’s outrages are far less engaging than the cops and robbers stuff unfolding in the 70s. It is worrying, moreover, that many online commenters in America are already taking Say Nothing as a dummy’s guide to the conflict when it sets to one side many critical elements of the struggle – the role of loyalist paramilitaries, violence by the British Army, the murders committed by the Provisionals south of the border are all missing.
That isn’t the fault of the series. 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.
‘Say Nothing’ is streaming on Disney Plus
