In 1972, the IRA kidnapped and murdered Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10 in Belfast. Her story is told in Disney miniseries Say Nothing, but one of her children says he does not intend to watch it. Michael McConville, who was a child when his mother was abducted, says the critically acclaimed series is "cruel" and "horrendous," the Guardian reports. "Disney is renowned for entertainment. My mother's death is not 'entertainment' for me and my family," he said in a statement Wednesday, per the Belfast Telegraph. "This is our reality, every day for 52 years." Jean McConville's body wasn't found until 2003.
"I just don't think people realize how hurtful this is," McConville said. "The portrayal of the execution and secret burial of my mother is horrendous and unless you have lived through it, you will never understand just how cruel it is. Everyone knows the story of Jean McConville: even Hillary Clinton who I met a few years ago knew my mother's story. And yet here is another telling of it that I and my family have to endure."
- The series, which tells the story of several people over the decades of the Troubles, is based on the book Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. He tells the BBC that he had a "number of meetings" with the McConvilles and representatives of other families. "We wanted to make it clear that we were going to approach this story with a great deal of sensitivity and compassion," he says.
- The niece of Joe Lynskey, whose murder is depicted in the show, tells the BBC that production had already started when Keefe spoke to the family about the show. Maria Lynskey says the family did not approve. She says she accepts that the history has to be told but she doesn't think she'll be able to watch it. "I know these families, I know what they've been through," she says. "To watch your mother being taken from her home when you were a child, or to see your brother in a bog with a gun to the back of his head, that becomes reality to you, you're seeing it again."
- Benji Wilson at the Telegraph praises the series for its handling of a narrative "that spans four decades of murder and betrayal." The early episodes may seem like they are romanticizing the conflict, he writes, but they "exist to cast a shadow: Say Nothing should be watched as a whole, because it soon develops into something more elegiac and profound."
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