Fizzingly angry sign language drama grips you with its secrets

I don't think I've ever seen anyone as angry as recently-released murderer Daniel Brennan in the new BBC drama Reunion (BBC1, Mon/Tues, 9pm).

- Philip Cunnington on Reunion

And not just peeved, or cross, but fizzingly, explosively angry, eyes bulging and veins popping.

To be fair, it seems like Brennan, played with shaven-headed menace by Matthew Gurney, has quite a lot to be angry about.

He’s served a sentence for the killing of Ray Mokhtar, and as the first two episodes unfold, we learn that Brennan and Mokhtar have a history stretching back to their childhoods and time spent at a school for the deaf.

Brennan is deaf, you see, profoundly so; a fact which has complicated his time in prison, leaving him in his own particular solitary confinement, broken periodically by sessions with his case management officer - where he learns that his wife has died - and unpleasant altercations with his fellow prisoners.

Brennan's deafness is not the point of this series, however. It’s a fact of life for him, his daughter Carly (Lara Peake), the victim Ray and Ray’s daughter Miri (Rose Ayling-Ellis).

Many of the conversations are done in British Sign Language (BSL), which flows as naturally as speech, carrying all the frustration, spite and love.