The Listeners

As told by those on the other side of the experience, often the easiest way to end up in a cult is to be made to feel welcome, listened to and absolutely normal. Community is a seductive thing for those who feel untethered from the reality everyone around them appears to occupy with ease. Over the first two episodes of Jordan Tannahill’s new BBC adaptation of his own novel, we witness its effect taking hold of Claire (Rebecca Hall) as she desperately clings to any hope of answers – or at least, understanding – that she can find. Still, that’s only one of the options for how Tannerhill’s series appears to be taking shape. At so early and inconclusive a point, this drama could be taken as a portrait of encroaching mental illness; of a suburbanite’s alarmingly swift assimilation into a cult mentality; of rebellion against the mundane, or the early rumblings of a supernatural mystery. Could it be all of these things? None? The lack of clear answers ensures that The Listeners already makes for queasily compulsive viewing, though as ever, much may depend on just how it resolves itself.

Stylishly helmed by Zola’s Janicza Bravo in homage to paranoid thrillers of yesteryear (a stray image in the opening credits may put viewers in mind of Rosemary’s Baby), these episodes wisely place much of their stock in Hall, an actor magnetic enough to keep us on side even as her character’s behaviour grows ever more alarming. What begins as the mild annoyance of an unexplained, persistent rumbling sound soon turns to obsession when no medical explanation is unearthed, and Claire’s husband and daughter (Prasanna Puwanarajah and Mia Tharia, tracing a swift acceleration of exasperation into panic) attempt support without wholly understanding. One sees in Hall’s face the mounting fear that without an empirical reason for her experiences, there may be something far more incontrovertibly wrong than she is prepared to face.

When a possible answer seems to present itself from an unexpected source, Claire cannot resist greeting it with hope, even exhilaration. This, even when taking into account that the great hope is an overly familiar student in her class (Ollie West) who claims to hear the rumbling as well, and that pursuing it entails spending far too much time with him outside of school hours. Immediately, the vaguely informal intimacy the two fall into brings a prickle of deepest unease, and this before the two have found their way to a small commune of fellow listeners, led by a disquietingly chipper pair played by Gayle Rankin and Amr Waked. The noise is their unifying force, not the thing driving people away, and composer Dev Hynes and sound designer Steve Fanagan transform the rumbling into a pulsating heartbeat; a sound that appears to be driving its listeners towards something, though what is unclear. Self-destruction?

Throughout, Claire comes to feel opaque enough that we question the stories she’s been telling herself. Would she, in fact, encourage the attention of a teenage student? And is the eerie listening commune – hostile to outsiders in much the same fashion as a cult – simply the excuse she’s been looking for to cut loose? In the end, The Listeners will prove worth following to the end because, though Claire’s actions may not make sense to us, Hall keeps us assured that they make sense to her, in every moment, whatever that may mean for where she’s headed.

Within two episodes, things have already escalated from bad to worse. One senses that Tannerhill and Bravo’s drama has further unsettling layers to reveal, but for now, this makes for a propulsively engaging start.

Thomas Messner

Read more reviews from our London Film Festival coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the London Film Festival website here.

Watch the trailer for The Listeners here: