A television drama about Jean McConville’s disappearance and its nuanced portrayal of the IRA perpetrators was always going to be controversial – and so it’s proven.

In the same week that Say Nothing dropped on Disney+ – they’ve sure come a long way from Mickey Mouse – Jean’s son-in-law Seamus McKendry claimed that the private screening they’d been promised had never materialised.

“The abduction scene in the first episode was poorly portrayed,” he told The Sunday World. “There was no communication with the programme-makers at all. They never once lifted the phone to ask us what is your opinion on this or that.”

The series instead draws heavily on Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder And Memory In Northern Ireland, the 2018 book by New York investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe who in turn based his bestseller on Boston College’s ‘Belfast Project’.

Conducted between 2000 and 2006, the idea was to get Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries to talk truthfully about their roles in The Troubles with the interviews only being released after their deaths.

Well, that was the idea. In 2010, the Police Service of Northern Ireland served Boston College with a subpoena demanding the release of interviews pertaining to Jean McConville’s disappearance.

“The choice to investigate criminal activity belongs to the government and is not subject to veto by academic researchers,” said the PSNI who, after a lengthy court battle, got the cassette tapes they were looking for.

The man responsible for the TV adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s book is fellow American Joshua Zetumer who’s previously worked on the likes of RoboCop, Patriots Day and the James Bond franchise.

Say Nothing starts with Dolours Price – or rather the West Belfast actress playing her, Lola Petticrew – proclaiming that, “While other kids got stories about fairies and pixies, we got the story of dad’s famous prison escape.”

Followed by Jean McConville being ordered out of the bath by a group of IRA gunmen/women – 1972/‘3 were the years when the Provos really started to become an equal opportunities organisation – it sets the tone for the nine hours of breathless action that follows.

NEWS BULLETIN FOOTAGE

Jean’s son, Michael McConville, meanwhile, is adamant that the abduction isn’t – or shouldn’t be treated as – “entertainment.”

“Everyone knows the story of Jean McConville; even Hillary Clinton, who I met a few years ago, knew my mother’s story,” he told the BBC. “And yet here is another telling of it that I and my family have to endure. Unless you have lived through it, you will never understand just how cruel it is.”

Each episode ends with a closing credits disclaimer that, “Gerry Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA or participating in any IRA-related violence.”

Michael Colgan as the older Gerry Adams in Say Nothing

Based on his research, though, Joshua Zetumer portrays him in a different light.

In a letter to the Irish Times, Gerry Adams’ lawyers once again stress that, “Mr. Adams had no involvement in the killing or burial of any of those secretly buried by the IRA” and added that their client hasn’t watched Say Nothing.

In the TV series, Dolours and her fellow IRA volunteer sister, Marian, are for the most part portrayed as freedom fighting heroines while the senior British army officers using all means – including torture – to bring them to justice are mainly of the bumbling ex-public schoolboy variety.

“Missing Derry Girls? Try Say Nothing, the captivating series about The Troubles in Northern Ireland,” reads one of the American reviews, which appears crass until the Price sisters don nuns’ habits to rob a post office in a scene that’s more Benny Hill than Steve McQueen’s Hunger. There’s also a Basil Fawlty-esque quality about the TV ‘Gerry Adams’, who’s all gangly limbs and sarcastic wisecracks.

There’s nothing slapstick, though, about the violence which, regardless of what side is committing it, is graphic in the extreme and a reminder of the human costs of The Troubles.

One of Say Nothing’s other key characters is Brendan Hughes, AKA ‘The Dark’, who joined the IRA in 1969 and was the operational commander of the Bloody Friday bombings in Belfast which killed nine people. After similarly masterminding the Old Bailey bombing in London, he was interned in 1974 in Long Kesh, but managed to escape in a dustcart, later being recaptured and sent to the H-Blocks where he organised the 1980 hunger strike. He died in 2008 but remains a Republican hero.

Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe with a moustachioed Anthony Boyle who plays Brendan Hughes and Josh Finan who appears as Gerry Adams in Say Nothing

He’s played by Anthony Boyle, a fellow West Belfast native who shortly after filming the series told Hot Press: “I went to an all girls’ school on the Falls Road for two years – there were ten boys and two thousand girls. Awful, right? When I came out, I’d drive home past a mural of Brendan Hughes so it was surreal to play him.

“Usually when you’re playing people you have to imagine what they’re like, but not this time, because I’ve walked the same streets as Brendan and know members of his family. It felt like it wasn’t much of a reach. Even so, I read Voices From The Grave and other books about him. There’s lots of news bulletin footage of Brendan speaking and eye-witness accounts of his time in the H-Blocks. I did a real deep dive into his life.”

CRACKING SOUNDTRACK

Talking to the likes of Richard Dormer, Lisa McGee, Róisín Gallagher and Colm Meaney, they all say they feel a responsibility to get it right when appearing in TV shows and films about the North.

“Yeah, you totally want to make sure it’s representing things properly,” Anthony Boyle agrees. “I’d spent my whole career up to this point avoiding stuff set back home because it’s so sensitive. This is a history where brothers have killed each other over which splinter group they’re going to pledge allegiance to. You have to get these stories right. I’ve seen the first two episodes of Say Nothing and it feels like the show I wanted to make. I really hope people respond to it.”

Kneecap’s Mo Chara has also spoken about the almost rock star status of IRA members among sections of the Nationalist community.

“Bobby Sands is a hero to people in our community,” he reflects. “A lot of people think of the IRA as being stone cold fucking killers out for blood – but then you have somebody like him, a gentle soul who just felt he had to do what’s necessary to fight against occupation. He really, really taints that idea the Brits have of what the IRA were. They were teachers, shopkeepers and other local people who stood up for what’s right.”

The only aspect of Say Nothing which hasn’t so far proven controversial is the cracking soundtrack, which includes such copper-fastened 1970’s classics as Slade’s ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’, Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)’, Lisa O'Neill’s ‘Old Note’, The Kinks’ ‘This Time Tomorrow’ – and best of all, Rudi’s ‘Big Time’ punk anthem.

As for the show itself, Hot Press is going to break with the habit of a lifetime and let you make your own mind up!

Say Nothing can be seen now on Disney+