Once again I’m recommending the Scriptnotes podcast, this time the episode entitled “Say Nothing with Joshua Zetumer”, where Craig Mazin goes solo and interviews none other than Joshua Zetumer about his recent mini-series Say Nothing.

Craig welcomes writer and showrunner Joshua Zetumer, creator of the limited series Say Nothing, to explore the process of dramatizing real events — particularly when the subject matter can be volatile. They discuss how to keep a sprawling historical epic from feeling like a lecture, keeping a consistent tone, humanizing complicated people, and how not to get sued by the people who were really involved.

The series is about the long-lasting and violent conflict in Northern Ireland between the Irish Protestants and the Irish Catholics, often referred to as The Troubles.

Craig is very enthusiastic about the series, so I decided to give it a look-see.

But one thing that Craig said confused me. He thought that Gerry Adams was one of the “good guys” and was surprised to find out all the awful things Adams had done, and furthermore how the series was required to add a disclaimer to each episode in order to avoid being sued by the still-very-much-alive Adams. I admit to not being fully informed about all the ins and outs of the period known as The Troubles, but my recollection was that Gerry Adams was one of the worst of the worst.

Anyway, if I’ve convinced you to listen to the podcast or to try to watch the series, or if you’ve decided not to watch the show, then you might want to stop reading right now.

Still with me?

OK, well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. No spoilers, just some frank language about those who kill over religion.

I tried watching the first episode, knowing full well that the show was going to be about religious nuts killing other religious nuts because…religion. Because they don’t worship the same god in the same way? Because they don’t worship at the same churches? I really don’t know. Why do religious nutcases kill other religious nutcases?

I’d feel the same way even if there were some reason to think that the god they are so fired up about is real, but when the god is an imaginary one, like the god of the Bible, I just throw up my hands. What is the matter with these people? 

So after about 20 minutes of religious nuts, some of them labeled Protestants and some of them labeled Catholics, torturing and maiming and killing each other for no good reason, and in those 20 minutes it’s the Irish Protestants beating up and killing the Irish Catholics, who are just trying to live their lives peacefully, so I could actually sympathize with the Catholics at that point. Still it’s religious bigotry, religious violence, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.

As far as I’m concerned someone who is willing to kill or die for a god, whether that god is real or imaginary, that person is a fucking idiot, and I cannot sympathize.

That sequence of photos is an Irish Protestant man beating up on an Irish Catholic girl who was peacefully marching. I wanted to give an example of the brutality of the religious zealots.

The girl, by the way, is Dolours Price, who in later life would be married to the actor Steven Rea, who is perhaps best known for his role in The Crying Game. 

I know that Craig Mazin is an atheist as am I, so clearly he saw something in the show that I didn’t. Perhaps you will too.

In case I wasn’t clear, I found the violence on the show to be much greater than I’m comfortable with. That it was motivated by religion made it that much worse. That it was based on a true story made it even that much worse. So three levels of discomfort for me.

Maybe I’ll give it another chance. I don’t know. According to the discussion on the podcast, there are far worse things to come in succeeding episodes, so I’m not sure I could take much more.

But if you’ve seen the show or if you go ahead and watch it, please let me know what you think of it.