“Say Nothing” begins in a state of knotted tension: an introductory voiceover by Lola Petticrew’s resolute Dolours Price lets us know we’re walking in on a fight between the British and the Irish, “the same old s**te,” that’s spanned 800 years.

Shortly after this cold open we cut to the early aughts when a nameless interviewer (Seamus O'Hara) sits across from Dolours (Maxine Peake). The man is working to compile an oral history of the Troubles for Boston College's Belfast Project. Dolours, a former Provisional Irish Republican Army militant, is visibly nervous. She's a movie star's wife at this point in her story, well past her days of setting bombs in the name of struggle.

She also knows what happens to old soldiers with loose lips.

Her interviewer tries to reassure her. “The stuff I’ll be asking you about is all ancient history,” he says.

“Not to them,” says Dolours. Watching from a perch in the surveillance age, her reticence is understandable. We also understand the pain resulting from a refusal to bring dark history into the light.

Say Nothing (FX)

Dolours Price is but one person. Maybe she's also a stand-in for a nation perpetually haunted by the Troubles, the violent escalation between Northern Ireland's Catholics and Protestant loyalists through which “Say Nothing” travels. As young adults Dolours (Petticrew) and Marian Price (Hazel Doupe) become swept up in a movement that caught fire in the late 1960s and tore through the ‘70s, ‘80s and most of the '90s.

By the early aughts an older, wiser Dolours is disillusioned with the meaninglessness of so much bloodshed and pondering what it means to have so many spent matches poking her from inside her pockets.

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Peake’s staid and knowing portrayal stands in contrast and complement to that of Petticrew, whose resolute manner vacillates between a flinty swagger and true anguish. Petticrew leads us through Dolours' youth through her and Marian's harrowing imprisonment. In scenes showing Dolours' commitment to the mission clashing with........

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