Say Nothing

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The phrase "Whatever you say, say nothing" is a famous Northern Irish cultural maxim and the refrain of a renowned 1975 poem by Nobel-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney. It reflects the guarded silence, coded sectarian identifiers, and caution used during the turbulent era of The Troubles.

"The IRA issued a statement, eloquently capturing the strategic advantage of terrorism: 'Today we were unlucky, but remember, we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.'"

"Boston tapes were supposed to lie untouched, like bottles in a wine cellar, until some future date when the participants were dead..."

Say Nothing on SBS

Say Nothing is entirely based on a true story. It is adapted from Patrick Radden Keefe’s acclaimed non-fiction book, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which investigates real events from a turbulent era known as the Troubles.

Real-Life Events Covered / See the Say Nothing Cast Compared to Their Real Life Counterparts

The Disappearance of Jean McConville: The narrative centers on the 1972 abduction and murder of McConville, a widowed mother of ten from Belfast who was wrongfully accused by the Provisional IRA of being a British informant
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The Price Sisters: The story tracks the radicalization and involvement of Dolours and Marian Price, two young sisters who joined the IRA and participated in high-profile bombings. 
The Boston College Project: Much of the investigative material relies on oral history archives (the Boston Tapes), where former paramilitaries like Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price gave recorded testimonies about secret IRA actions, specifying roles and commands. 
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland





It’s one battle after another in ‘Say Nothing’, a gripping thriller rooted in troubling history



Rebellion may be glamorised in a lot of blockbuster movies, but the true cost of standing up for what you believe in is unpacked in Say Nothing.






Say Nothing tells the dark true story of two young sisters and the lengths they went to for the IRA

It was after stumbling upon the obituary for Dolours Price in 2013 that New Yorker investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe was compelled to write his bestselling book, Say Nothing.
Fast facts about Say Nothing
What: Riveting TV adaptation of bestselling book Say Nothing, centred on two women consigned to starkly different fates during The Troubles
Starring: Lola Petticrew, Hazel Doupe, Anthony Boyle, Josh Finan, Maxine Peake
Where: Streaming on Disney+
Likely to make you feel: Captivated, enraged and devastated
Optioned into a TV show almost as soon as it was published in 2018, Keefe catalogued the stories of the Irish republican and IRA member, and the woman potentially "disappeared" by her, single mother-of-10 Jean McConville.
Say Nothing is deliberately truncated in its scope. Keefe never intended for the book, and now TV show, to be an exhaustive account of the period known as The Troubles – the decades-long violent sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland between Protestant unionists (otherwise known as 'loyalists' for their loyalty to the English crown) and Roman Catholic nationalists (otherwise known as 'republicans' for their desire to unify with the Republic of Ireland).
Countering the many informative yet dense books that exist on The Troubles, Keefe distilled the impacts of the conflict by focusing in on the lives of Dolours and her sister Marian, terrorists to some, freedom fighters to others; Jean McConville, whose family still live tarnished by unfounded allegations that she was an informant; and top IRA commanders Brendan 'The Dark' Hughes and Gerry Adams.
An astonishing feat of narrative non-fiction, Say Nothing reads more like a novel than a history book, and the TV adaptation is similar – treading rich and interesting ground by being a dramatisation of historical actors and key events that unfolded during The Troubles rather than a documentary. A steadfast allegiance to the truth characterises them both, largely informed by testimonies granted to the oral history undertaking, The Belfast Project.
The disappearance of Jean
Throughout The Troubles, 17 people "disappeared" without a trace. Their loved ones never found out what happened to them, whether they were alive or dead, or where their bodies were. The TV show starts, as the book does, with the abduction of Jean McConville at gunpoint by eight men and women, situating its primary sympathies with The Troubles' many victims, known and otherwise.

The TV adaptation underlines how young the two sisters and their peers were during this time. (Supplied: Disney+)
If the book is focused, the TV show narrows the lens even more. Bit players in Dolours and Marian's lives and swathes of background information are foregone in favour of a pulsating narrative that forges ahead at a breakneck speed, as the two find themselves taken to the extremes of a cause they believe in deeply.
Lola Petticrew is effervescent as the plucky and intelligent Dolours, fashioning their red hair into different styles as she evolves into disparate versions of herself – from pacifist to bank robber to bomb-maker to hunger-striker. Hazel Doupe is excellent as her dourer and more militant younger sister Marian – willing to go wherever Dolours leads her, and further.
If there is to be one criticism of the show, it's that there's not enough backgrounding of the discrimination that faced Irish Catholics, who were routinely denied jobs, housing, education, the right to vote and access to political positions of power. The politicisation of young disenfranchised Irish Catholics and their belief in the fairness of their armed struggle makes particular sense in this context.
As teenagers elsewhere in the world fall in love and while their time away doing not much at all, Dolours and Marian are fundraising for the IRA (read: robbing banks dressed as nuns), agitating to carry Armalite guns instead of being relegated to making food – roles traditionally performed by women in the IRA until the sisters came onto the scene – and working for Gerry's mysterious Unknowns task force.
The more visually immediate medium of television underlines how incredibly young the two sisters and their peers were during this formative period – Dolours and Marian were 21 and 18, respectively, when they joined the IRA.
Through casual asides in conversations, the show's tightly honed script skilfully conveys the sense of fatality and foregone conclusions instilled in many Irish Republican children from a young age. They grow up fantasising how they'll die – whether by firing squad or being hung for treason – while many of their upbringings are cloaked in the honour of belonging to a long lineage of men and women imprisoned or killed for their republicanism.
But despite all this, 1970s West Belfast is resurrected through pops of colour, meticulously observed fashion, a rollicking punk rock soundtrack and sweeping vistas of the city that disguise the turmoil happening underneath.

(L-r) Josh Finan and Anthony Boyle play young versions of Gerry Adams and Brendan Hughes. (Supplied: Disney+)
Montages of Dolours and Marian plotting and scheming alongside the charismatic Brendan (a rapscallion Anthony Boyle, sporting a fetching moustache identical to the real-life Hughes) and the morally vacillating Gerry (a reedy, inscrutable Josh Finan) are imbued with a sense of heady fun and light-heartedness, despite the severity of what they're planning.
The show expertly evokes the halcyon days of youth and the romance of radical politics, though it's careful to never romanticise the actions of the quartet, which in many cases lead to the deaths and injury of civilians.
The long shadow of history
Slowing down in what is effectively the second act of the show, Say Nothing catapults a decade forward as the characters move from moral clarity to moral ambiguity in their middle-age. An increasingly embattled Dolours, Marian and Brendan find themselves left behind by Gerry's negotiations of a peace process as head of the Sinn Féin party, and his categorical denial of ever having been in the IRA.
Their conviction in the violent acts they perpetrated in their youth is robbed retrospectively of its political justification, leaving them feeling remorse and guilt. Unfolding alongside this shared existential crisis is Helen McConville's dogged search for her mother, her grief an enduring testament of the IRA's untold violence.

Say Nothing is careful to never romanticise the actions of the group. (Supplied: Disney+)
You can't spoil history, but one of the most compelling qualities of Say Nothing lies in its marriage of a cold case murder with broader commentary about the psychological toll of violent resistance. Towards the end of the book, Keefe discovers who Jean's murderer is – a twist that's handled as masterfully in the show as it is in the source material.
Say Nothing is about a collective culture of silence, and the paralysis in not being able to grieve, reconcile the past with the present, and move forward.
The echoes and ruptures of The Troubles still reverberate through Northern Ireland today. Every episode of the show is bookended by a statement that Gerry Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA. Families continue to search for their disappeared loved ones. Long-held prejudices simmer.
By casting Petticrew and Boyle – two Northern Irish actors who grew up in the long shadow of The Troubles – and deferring to their lived experience, this faithful adaptation honours the complexities, nuances and contradictions of a state in crisis.