Subtle, soul-searching dramas tackling Northern Ireland’s Troubles are proving that few escaped this era unscathed

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

In the very first reel, we’re reminded that “the Irish have been arguing over the same sh*te for 800 years”. So it comes as no surprise that the drama Say Nothing – about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the toll they took, including a burden of silence carried by many to this day – has already drawn as much criticism as praise from all sides.

Adapted from Patrick Radden Keefe’s non-fiction bestseller, it stars Maxine Peake as the former paramilitary Dolours Price, narrating and reflecting on her violent past – as the real Price and others did for Boston College’s “Belfast Project”, an oral history of the Troubles – before the drama flashes back to chart how Price and her sister Marian evolved from peaceful protestors into key members of the IRA unit that carried out the 1973 Old Bailey bombing.

True, there’s a caperish quality to some of their “fundraising” antics – the sisters dress up as nuns to rob a bank at gunpoint – that presumably won’t sit well with victims of such violence. There’s nothing about loyalist paramilitaries’ equal and opposite activities, and the Republican mission is positioned as one of ideological zeal, with no account of the economic disparity suffered by Catholics. And Gerry Adams has, of course, denied ever being part of the IRA or its activities, the disclaimer after every episode providing a wry counterpoint to his vivid depiction on screen.

Whatever it gets wrong, Say Nothing succeeds in bringing home the cost wrought to so many by virtue of era and circumstance – when living in a particular street, or drinking in a particular pub, construed a political act.

Equally evocative is Trespasses, also adapted from a bestselling book and set at the height of the Troubles. The best TV drama I’ve seen this year, it depicts the forbidden love affair between teacher Cushla (Catholic) and lawyer Michael (married, Protestant), and delicately weaves the personal with the political. The stakes are made clear by the rotten fate of a Protestant-Catholic couple living on a nearby estate. After a lovers’ tiff, Michael asks Cushla, “We’re all right?” She replies, “We’re doomed. Apart from that, we’re grand.”

Nearly 30 years after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, a host of writers from Northern Ireland are leaning into its violent past to create subtle, soul-searching drama. Historians pin the start of the Troubles to 1968, which means it’s taken nearly as long as they lasted for writers to speak up – why?

The answer is the same reason their stories remain powerful now: that no one who lived through that era – one of armed soldiers patrolling streets, helicopters whirring overhead and threat all around – emerged unaffected. Every resident of Northern Ireland, particularly Belfast, was steeped in “fight or flight”, too busy trying to get through each day to build the narrative, let alone provide the complex political, cultural, religious context these stories demand.

Three decades later, we meet characters both real and invented, ordinary people rendered extraordinary through circumstance, capable of the worst of behaviour, but also of unexpected kindness and courage. The stories are embedded in the era, but the humanity is timeless.

Nowhere is the contrast between ordinary life and extraordinary setting more charming than in Derry Girls. When a bomb threat closes a nearby bridge and Aunt Sarah complains, “they want ordinary people to suffer”, it transpires she’ll have to miss her appointment at the sunbed salon. For three series, writer Lisa McGee had us laughing out loud with her take on the past, but finally brought a lump to the throat with an ending where every generation votes “Yes” in the 1998 referendum for peace.

Say Nothing and Trespasses also conclude with modern-day scenes. It’s telling that, even in exploring the past, all three reach for upbeat, optimistic bookmarks to all that went before.

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Say Nothing is on Monday and Tuesday at 9pm on Channel 4. Trespasses is available on Channel 4 streaming.

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