What happens to a family when one of its integral members experiences something that the rest of them can’t comprehend? This is one of the central questions in BBC’s chilling new drama, The Listeners.
Secondary school teacher Claire’s life begins to steadily unravel when she starts to hear a low frequency hum that no one else around her can hear. For a while, possible explanations include tinnitus, a new electricity pylon in the area and her stress manifesting itself in an imagined sound – none of which suffice.
That’s until she discovers a network of people who can hear the sound too – including one of her students. What follows is an eerie, gripping and masterfully acted tale about conspiracy, finding fulfilment within the family dynamic and the lengths people will go to feel understood.
The four-part series, directed by Janicza Bravo and starring Rebecca Hall, Ollie West, Prasanna Puwanarajah and Amr Waked, is inspired by Jordan Tannahill’s 2021 novel of the same name. Set in the UK rather than the US, England’s greyscale aesthetic does little to relieve the stillness and sense of unease that underpins the story.
In episode one, the audience is invited into Claire’s stable albeit unremarkable life. She has a job in the local secondary school, a good relationship with her teenage daughter and a loving husband. Perhaps more importantly, she seems to have a sound and rational mind until the hum becomes impossible to ignore.
‘If we were at a dinner party and Claire was at this dinner party and three seats down, she heard a woman talking about a sound that she was hearing that no one else could hear, Claire is the kind of person who would immediately dismiss or invalidate or make fun of that person,’ says Bravo. ‘So everyone else in this world is kind of like that.’
It is the audience’s role, then, to fall somewhere in between empathy and suspicion. When Claire grows close with her student Kyle – who is in her daughter’s year at school – after discovering he can also hear the sound, she is torn between the validation their relationship offers and the clear moral boundary preventing her from befriending a student.
When she starts to distance herself from her family to spend time with Kyle and their newfound community of 'listeners', another moral quandary is presented for all involved. For Claire's family, they must decide whether to let her follow this strange path of self-discovery – at great cost. While Claire is forced to work out whether it's worth alienating those around her.
‘I think the work was to approach all of these individuals with as much generosity and tenderness as we can,’ says the director. ‘Even though we don’t have a lot of real estate in seeing what the everyday is like in their lives, hopefully what it feels like is that it’s not only driving Claire crazy but it’s driving them crazy. And it’s driving her from them.’
As Claire’s mental health becomes increasingly fragile under the pressure of her situation, the family unit falters. ‘When the family is very small then every member functions as integral to the whole. In this family,’ continues Bravo, ‘when a third backs away, it doesn’t work.’
Hall performs this inner conflict with a deftness that will no doubt earn her her flowers. ‘She was such a dream to work with,’ Bravo reveals. ‘I want to work with her again.
‘You can propose an idea that might be silly or embarrassing or horrible and some people will meet the note with a question before going out there and trying it, but Rebecca is yes first.’ The result of which is a series of beautiful, surrealist scenes that depict Claire’s state of mania.
As such, whether her experiences are real or imagined remains unclear. The listeners and indeed the viewers are encouraged to question their surroundings.
‘With regards to how I approached conspiracy in the context of The Listeners,' Bravo tells us, 'I decided that if you felt totally isolated and your home team no longer has access to the language you are using to communicate in and suddenly another door opens then why not walk through that door and accept family where you can.’ The result of which, in this instance, turns out to be devastating.
Ironically for a series desperately searching for answers, The Listeners will no doubt leave audiences with a lot of questions. We can say with certainty, however, that it is a series worth watching.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across pop culture, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things TV for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow shows with equal respect).