Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Lola Pettigrew, Hazel Doupe, Emily Healy, Maxine Peake, Anthony Boyle, Josh Finan, Judith Roddy, Seamus O’ Hara, Connor Trainor, Art Parkinson, Cúán Hosty-Blaney, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Amy Molloy, Martiin McCann, Michael Coglan, Helen Behan, Rory Kinnear, Kerri Quinn, Laura Donnelly, Stuart Graham, Frank Blake, Eileen Walsh, Adam Best, Damien Molony, Ian McElhinney.
The difference between fact and fiction is headlines.
Quite often in war the headline is the biggest winner, the larger the perceived outrage the more in draws in debate, both sides questioning what they are achieving, and by effect the more courage and conviction the aggrieved party will feel to justify their cause.
The issues start when one side declares its war and the other states it as anything but, a euphemism for troubles, a sense of superiority that is demeaned enough to offer its own citizens a feeling that the other side is doing nothing more than speaking out of turn, behaving in effect like a child throwing a tantrum; that’s when headlines become distorted, one-sided, often boiled down to who believes the propaganda, who believes the lies, and who can reveal a sense of truth long after they have died.
Say Nothing is television at its most revealing, its most damaging, its most truthful, and its most sorrowful, and at the heart of it is an island torn by politics and religion, and as a voyeur into the past you can help but feel wretched unhappiness at the deaths and lives taken on both sides in the name of freedom and in some cases, revenge.
Say Nothing is the story of the Price sisters, Dolours and Marian, two young teenage women thrust into the battle against the Protestant minority and who stuck to their principles and beliefs and who then took the war to the British mainland when they bombed The Old Bailey in London, causing maximum damage and a beginning of a new front as the 1970s began.
What the series is at pains to show is that truth and propaganda are often closer than many realise, and with many of those still alive, especially at the core of the story, the disappearance of those who crossed the I.R.A., including the family of Jean McConville who was judged to be an informant by a select unknown band of people, the tread lightly approach is framed subtly as the violence is handed out with brutality and often without shame.
Three women’s stories, one admitted in full in tape as she hoped to bring down an historical figure, one who stayed silent, and one whose silence was thrust upon her as the bullet took her life in the quiet of dark on a reclusive beach, these interwoven lives crossed with people such as Brendan Hughes, British officer Frank Kitson, and perhaps strangely the actor Stephen Rae, are captured not with a sense of support, but with as much as honesty as the past allows; and with compelling performances by Lola Pettigrew, Hazel Doupe, Maxine Peake, Anthony Boyle and Josh Finan, what transpires is an exercise in damnation and regret, of pride, and suffering.
For many the period is still deeply etched into the memory, and whilst a couple of generations have passed since the peace accords, there remains unanswered questions, headlines that cannot be forgotten, damage that will not be repaired until an unequivocal answer is given.
An incredible piece of television, one that for the boundaries it could not cross does exceedingly well to navigate the difference between truth and fiction.
Ian D. Hall