{"id":2376930,"date":"2024-12-05T23:25:01","date_gmt":"2024-12-06T04:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/adapting-troubled-history-review-of-say-nothing-on-hulu-washington-examiner\/"},"modified":"2024-12-05T23:27:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T04:27:55","slug":"adapting-troubled-history-review-of-say-nothing-on-hulu-washington-examiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/adapting-troubled-history-review-of-say-nothing-on-hulu-washington-examiner\/","title":{"rendered":"Adapting troubled history: Review of Say Nothing on Hulu &#8211; Washington Examiner"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fadapting-troubled-history-review-of-say-nothing-on-hulu-washington-examiner%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2376930&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The review discusses the adaptation of patrick Radden\u200d Keefe&#8217;s 2018 book *Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland*, which focuses on the 1972 abduction and disappearance of \u2063Jean McConville by\u200d the IRA. the book is noted \u200dfor its \u2064<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/in-one-of-historys-biggest-fires-100-years-ago-humble-people-became-major-heroes\/\" title=\"In One Of History\u2019s Biggest Fires 100 Years Ago, Humble People Became Major Heroes\">gripping narrative<\/a> and thorough reporting, even uncovering \u200dthe assailant&#8217;s identity. Following its success, Hulu, Disney+,\u2063 and FX produced \u2063a nine-part miniseries\u2063 adaptation that largely honors the original \u200cwork.\u2064 The series explores dual timelines: \u2062one in the 2000s,where oral\u2064 histories from former paramilitaries at Boston College come to light,and another featuring the younger version of Dolours Price,a prominent IRA figure. Throughout, the series\u200b reflects \u2064the contentious legacy of the Troubles\u200b and the struggle for memory amidst ongoing investigations into unsolved war crimes.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-header-search-button-mob dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search\" aria-labelledby=\"td-header-search-button\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search-inner\">\n<form method=\"get\" class=\"tdb-search-form\" action=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\"><\/form>\n<div class=\"tdb-aj-search\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/#\" role=\"button\" aria-label=\"Search\" class=\"tdb-head-search-btn dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<h1 class=\"tdb-title-text\">Adapting troubled history: Review of Say Nothing on Hulu<\/h1>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-title-line\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<p>In 2018 the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, a writer at the <em>New Yorker <\/em>who is particularly adept at using true crime as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/crime\/1573930\/patrick-radden-keefe-in-pieces\/\">vehicle<\/a> for probing intellectual questions, published <em>Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/Ireland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Ireland<\/a><\/em>. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/books\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">book<\/a> looked at the ripple effects of a notorious, decades-old crime: the 1972 abduction and &ldquo;disappearance&rdquo; of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10 who local IRA guerrillas believed, perhaps wrongly, to be a British informant at the height of the &ldquo;Troubles&rdquo; in Northern Ireland.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-paywall\">\n<p>This was a 560-page nonfiction book about a faraway conflict that few Americans had thought about in a long time. Although <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2019\/05\/02\/an-american-reporter-in-belfast-how-a-new-yorker-writer-got-so-much-wrong-in-his-bestselling-book-on-the-troubles\/\">not without critics<\/a>, it was also grippingly written, rigorously reported, and even uncovered the possible identity of the person who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed the tragic McConville. The book became a sensation and a surprise bestseller. Now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/hulu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Hulu<\/a>, Disney+, and FX have co-produced a dramatic nine-part miniseries adaptation, created by Josh Zetumer and with the involvement of Keefe. I&rsquo;m happy to say that it mostly does Keefe&rsquo;s book justice.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Lola Petticrew in &ldquo;Say Nothing.&rdquo; (Rob Youngston\/FX)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Like the book, the miniseries is broad in its sweep and often flashes back and forth in time. One timeline takes place in the 2000s, when an obscure academic project at Boston College accidentally unearths stories from the Troubles that many people would prefer left forgotten. A historian is interviewing former republican (pro-Irish) and loyalist (pro-British) paramilitaries; these gunmen, some of whom committed unspeakable acts of violence, agree to talk on the condition that the <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">oral history tapes remain sealed<\/a> in a vault in Boston until their deaths.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The paramilitaries include Dolours Price (played in her older version by Maxine Peake), once a firebrand female IRA volunteer. When the Northern Irish police learn of the tapes, they want to seize them as evidence for an investigation into unsolved disappearances, considered war crimes, perpetrated during the Troubles.<\/p>\n<p>An earlier timeline follows the younger Dolours (Lola Petticrew) and her sister, Marion Price (Hazel Doupe), two siblings in a lower-middle-class Catholic family in Belfast in the late 1960s and early &rsquo;70s. Like other Catholics in Northern Ireland, Dolours and Marion are effectively second-class citizens in a British exclave where Protestants control the overwhelming share of political and economic power. The Price sisters come from a longtime republican family; their parents are both proud former IRA volunteers, and their aunt Bridie, who lives with the family, lost her eyes and hands when a bomb she was assembling exploded years earlier.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ohio-couple-adopts-3-sisters-on-first-day-of-national-adoption-month\/\" title=\"Ohio Couple Adopts 3 Sisters on First Day of National Adoption Month\">young sisters<\/a>, however, are idealists who reject their parents&rsquo; cynicism. They believe that nonviolent rallies inspired by the American civil rights movement can help secure more rights for Catholics and bring about the eventual reunification of Ireland. That idealism is shattered when the sisters join a peaceful protest march that then gets viciously attacked by local Protestants as police look on and do little.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Dolours, followed by the more reticent Marion, decides to join the local guerrilla unit of the Provisional IRA, led by the charismatic Brendan Hughes (Anthony Boyle). During a riot Dolours and Marion also meet a geeky but capable young man, Gerry Adams (Josh Finan), who seems to be a rising intellectual mastermind of the IRA strategy in Belfast. (As a Disclaimer in the show&rsquo;s credits notes, Adams, later a parliamentarian, has always denied being a member of the IRA, though Northern Irish people of all stripes tend to regard this with raised eyebrows.) The Price sisters are frustrated when the IRA men refer them to a women&rsquo;s branch, Cumann na mBan, and treat them as helpmates. They decide to prove their worth by robbing banks for IRA funds.<\/p>\n<p>The sisters thrive in their new lives as guerrillas, which <em>Say Nothing <\/em>depicts in a series of tense, exhilarating, and sometimes darkly funny sequences. This is obviously a risky strategy for a nonfiction television adaptation: Someone catching only parts of the first half of the show might be left with a genuine impression that the series glorifies violence or indulges in IRA hagiography.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The second half of the series works hard to nuance and complicate that portrayal, and also makes clear that the show is pursuing the kind of approach taken by, say, the 2008 German film <em>Baader Meinhof Complex<\/em> &mdash; intoxicate with the seductive allure of political violence, build to a thrilling drug-like high, then come crashing down.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The crash takes many forms, including prison terms for the Price sisters for their roles in a series of London bombings. One of the show&rsquo;s single most haunting sequences, and one of the more poignant I&rsquo;ve seen in any recent TV series, sees Dolours enlisted to help bring a friend of hers to an IRA court-martial where he faces certain death. Then there is the matter of McConville (Judith Roddy), whose grown children, absent even their mother&rsquo;s body, have spent decades unable to truly grieve.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some critics and journalists have argued that <em>Say Nothing <\/em>falls short in conveying the full costs of the Price sisters&rsquo; actions, particularly regarding the victims of their London bombings. And that may be true. One of McConville&rsquo;s sons has also criticized the decision to make the show at all. Either way, the show is hardly propaganda. It is nuanced, gritty, and well worth watching.<\/p>\n<p><em>J. Oliver Conroy&rsquo;s writing has been published in the <\/em>Guardian<em>, <\/em>New York <em>magazine, the <\/em>Spectator<em>, the <\/em>New Criterion<em>, and other publications.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Review of Say Nothing on Hulu: Adapting a troubled history<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3130,"featured_media":2376931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/LA.TV_.121124.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[46234,46232,46231,46233,35107],"class_list":["post-2376930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-documentaryreview","tag-hulureview","tag-saynothing","tag-troubledhistory","tag-washingtonexaminer"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/LA.TV_.121124.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2376930"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2376934,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376930\/revisions\/2376934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2376931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2376930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2376930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2376930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}