The debut this week of the new FX historical true crime drama Say Nothing, based on the 2018 book of the same name by Patrick Radden Keefe, is a continuation of a trend I’ve talked about for a while now — namely, that FX (at least for viewers like me) is starting to feel like the new HBO.
What do I mean by that? For starters, HBO was once the primary network where creators could take risks, explore unconventional narratives, and blend genres. With HBO now fully subsumed into the mainstream corporate identity of its parentco WarnerMedia, however, FX has stepped into the breach and recreated the magic of HBO’s golden era — positioning the network as a home for adult-driven, prestige TV and unafraid of risk-taking or edgy content. That includes hits like The Bear, Shogun, The Americans, Atlanta, Justified, and the new Say Nothing, the latter of which is debuting with a perfect 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.
What it’s about: Say Nothing, all nine episodes of which will be available to stream on Hulu starting Nov. 14, is a series that spans 40 years and uses the disappearance and murder of a single mother to tell a larger story about Northern Ireland’s so-called Troubles — the period of violent conflict between nationalist and unionist forces that lasted from the 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
The mother, Jean McConville, was abducted from her home in 1972 and never seen alive again. “Telling the story of various Irish Republican Army (IRA) members,” FX explains, “Say Nothing explores the extremes some people will go to in the name of their beliefs, the way a deeply divided society can suddenly tip over into armed conflict, the long shadow of radical violence for all affected, and the emotional and psychological costs of a code of silence.”
McConville’s death was one of the most infamous tragedies of the Troubles, and Say Nothing does an excellent job of exploring the web of loyalty, betrayal, and secrets that surrounded her murder. This limited series, TV Guide raves, “is an elegiac drama about the psychological toll of political violence, told in such a way that its perpetrators are not heroes or villains, just people clinging to the idea that what they’re doing is right, to paraphrase a line from the show.”
Coming back to what I noted earlier, it used to be that HBO had a robust enough offering of ambitious television that I would feel confident giving almost any of its new series a try, simply because of the fact that it was airing on HBO. However, it’s FX that’s now the automatic stamp of quality, in my opinion, thanks to programming like the titles I mentioned above as well as new projects like Say Nothing — a product of FX’s obvious commitment to elevating TV from big-budget entertainment to unforgettable high art.
