Creator Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Say Nothing: A True Story of Reminiscence and Homicide in Northern Eire” was revealed in 2018 and was instantly acclaimed, receiving glorious opinions, showing on The New York Occasions bestseller checklist for weeks, and successful the 2019 Nationwide Guide Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. We’re big followers of the e book: Fellow editor Jacob Corridor and I’ve spoken about it on a pair episodes of our /Movie Each day podcast, and we raved about the way it instructed a propulsive, compelling story whereas additionally offering the required political and social context to grasp the Troubles, a violent interval of instability in Northern Eire that lasted for many years.
Now “Say Nothing” has been tailored right into a collection on FX on Hulu. I’ve seen 5 of the 9 episodes, and I am shocked on the diploma to which this adaptation manages to seize the depth, vitality, and ethical murkiness of the e book. If you have not heard about this present — which is extraordinarily attainable, on condition that it did not appear to obtain the identical all-out advertising and marketing blitz that one thing like FX’s “Shogun” did earlier this 12 months — I extremely encourage you to test it out, as a result of that is among the greatest TV you may watch in 2024.
FX’s Say Nothing is an immersive exploration of the Troubles
Along with the improbable writing, no-nonsense path from proficient up-and-comers, and glorious performances from its sprawling ensemble forged (Lola Petticrew, Hazel Doupe, Anthony Boyle, and Josh Finan are successfully the leads, however the entire forged is high notch), one of many largest causes the present succeeds is due to the manufacturing design and costume design. Oftentimes in interval initiatives like this, I get the sense that the filmmakers aren’t in a position to transfer the digicam in every single place they need as a result of modernity is encroaching onto their units and would pop the phantasm if the shot panned only a couple inches left or proper at a given second. In “Say Nothing,” the other is true: The present feels alive, harmful, free, and wholly immersive — nearly such as you’re stepping right into a documentary.
The present whisks us again to the Sixties, ’70s, and presumably past (I have never gotten that far but) and drops us proper into the battle between the Irish Republican Military and the occupying Brits, however sadly, there’s additionally a timelessness to among the concepts being introduced right here. Age-old arguments about terrorism versus freedom preventing, the oppression of colonizers, and what number of lives you are keen to take to make sure freedom are interrogated in thorny methods that may make you uncomfortable as a viewer. In a media panorama that’s far too incessantly content material to easily feed senseless slop to audiences, this can be a present that pokes and prods us in ways in which I discover thrilling.
I spoke just a little about “Say Nothing” on immediately’s episode of the /Movie Each day podcast, which you’ll be able to take heed to beneath (and for those who’re searching for extra from Patrick Radden Keefe, his addictive podcast “Winds of Change” was one of many issues that acquired me by means of 2020):
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