‘Say Nothing’ Review: FX/Hulu’s Tale of the Troubles Is Powerful, Ambitious and a Little Too Scattered

Hulu’s FX-produced limited series Say Nothing, like its source book by Patrick Radden Keefe, takes its name from the striking 1975 poem “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing,” by Seamus Heaney.

It’s a sad and angry piece that looks at the unfolding tragedy of the Troubles, critiquing simultaneously the culture of enforced silence that repressed free speech within Northern Ireland and the voyeuristic instincts of the outside media covering “the Irish thing.” The poem is dazzlingly focused on speech and storytelling, the power and limitations of words in contrast to what Heaney refers to as “Northern reticence, the tight gag of place / And times.”