If you’re like me, the five words “based on a true story” at the beginning of a movie or TV show hook me every time. While I will never deny the power of a writer’s imagination, reality is still stranger than any fiction and the best stories do still come from real life. And, most horrifying, the worse a tale is, the more likely it’s based on something that really happened.
When it comes to stories about The Troubles, I’m always riveted. That dark period in Northern Ireland, which lasted from the late 1960s to 1998 which pitted Catholics versus Protestants, English versus Irish and nationalists versus unionists, was a violent and destructive time during which thousands lost their lives and millions of lives were affected, the repercussions of 
which are still being felt today. Now, nearly thirty years after the peace treaty that ended the active violence, we are in a fascinating time to be looking back. There is enough distance to allow proper historical perspective and yet it is recent enough to still trigger emotional responses, largely due to the fact that there are still so many victims, participants, witnesses, aggressors and accused still alive who can tell their stories, some whom have never spoken before.
One of the darkest parts of the Troubles’ troubled history is that of The Disappeared, the dozens of people believed to have been abducted, murdered and secretly buried by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), the extremist paramilitary group of nationalist Northern Irish fighters committed to driving the British out of Northern Ireland. The IRA targeted individuals whom they believed were traitors or spies and had them killed, or such were the rumors, as there was never any proof. The real story of The Disappeared has never truly been told, at least not in full.
Say Nothing is a new nine-episode series on MAX, created by Josh Zetumer, based on the book of the same name by Patrick Radden Keefe, that follows the lives of several people in Belfast who become involved in the IRA in the early ‘70s and beyond. The well-crafted structure of the series is built on the foundation of the question of The Disappeared, most specifically the case of Jean McConville, the mother of 10 who vanished one night in 1972 from her flat in Belfast. With The Disappeared as the central building block, Say Nothing builds a story around it, filling in the rest of the puzzle pieces, including the characters, the time and place, what happened to lead up to it, what happened after it, and what the consequences were for everyone involved.
The narrative is centered on the character of Dolours Price, played in the series by Lola Petticrew and Maxine Peake, an IRA volunteer who was committed to the cause as a teenager and became one of the first women to become an active IRA member. Dolours and her sister, Marian, played by Hazel Doupe and Helen Behan, are integral parts of the IRA activities, and work closely with IRA leaders Brendan Hughes (Anthony Boyle and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and Gerry Adams (Josh Finan and Michael Colgan) in planning and carrying out attacks. The series follows Dolours through her life in and beyond the IRA, if there ever is an ability to be “beyond” the IRA.
This series is one of the best fictionalized-but-based-on-real-accounts I’ve seen of The Troubles yet. It’s hard to watch, but it covers so many of the major touchstones of the conflict, features so many of the most influential people who played a part in the history of the time. The acting is first-rate, there really doesn’t feel like there is any fat on the bone, it really moves along at a brisk pace and keeps you engaged—I mean, how can you not be?
It’s hard to believe all of this actually happened in our lifetimes. It is a history that needs to be reckoned with. And the first step is it needs to be recognized and the stories need to be told. And this is one story that you really need to hear.