OF UNSOUND MIND

A disquieting mood permeates the BBC's 'The Listeners', the complex story of a teacher whose life unravels after she starts hearing a ceaseless, mysterious hum, writes Nick Hilton

- Nick Hilton

Hysteria can have a magical quality. Whether it’s the “dancing plague” of 1518, where hundreds of medieval Alsatians found themselves inexplicably jigging, or the “laughing epidemic” that gripped colonial Tanzania back in 1962, inexplicable collective experiences can be as formative as they are unsettling. It is that conflict which BBC One’s new four-part drama, The Listeners, explores, as an unlikely group calcifies around a mysterious noise, even as their constituent lives crumble around them.

Claire (Rebecca Hall) is a teacher at a posh-looking school somewhere in non-specific rural England. She has a quiet domestic life with husband Paul (Prasanna Puwanarajah) and their daughter, Ashley (Mia Tharia). Her life is simple – almost boring – until she begins to hear a constant, low, monotonous humming. Audiologists tell her that she’s physically fine, that it could be a sign of early menopause or anxiety. “Medically there’s nothing wrong with me,” she laments, “so that can only mean one thing…” And yet Claire doesn’t think the noise is “all in her head”, and that suspicion is confirmed when her most truculent student, Kyle (Ollie West), reveals that he too can hear it. Together, they enter a world of people obsessed by a noise that will bend, if not break, their lives.