Say Nothing: 'sensational' dramatisation of Patrick Radden Keefe's bestselling book

The Disney+ series is a 'powerful reminder' of the Troubles

Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe in Say Nothing
Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe in Say Nothing
(Image credit: Rob Youngson / FX)

A history, a tragedy and at times a brutal thriller, Disney's nine-part series is a "sensational" amalgam, said Benji Wilson in The Daily Telegraph. Adapted from Patrick Radden Keefe's acclaimed non-fiction book about the Troubles, it weaves together at least seven narratives, with characters including Gerry Adams, the IRA bombers Dolours and Marian Price, and Jean McConville, the widowed mother of ten who was bundled into a van in 1972 and never seen alive again.

It begins as "thrilling" cops-and-robbers stuff: the IRA members of the 1970s are presented as folk heroes taking on the "stuffed-shirt" Brits, and there is a needling sense that the conflict is being romanticised; but stick with it, because the series develops into something more "elegiac and profound".

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