Provocative, haunting BBC drama starring Rebecca Hall

​If you’ve ever found yourself asking ‘what’s that noise?’, only to be met by blank looks, then the intriguing drama The Listeners should strike a chord.

Rebecca Hall leads the cast as Claire, an English teacher who notices a low, humming sound that no one else can hear.

It seems innocuous at first, but when Claire can’t find the source of the noise and tests rule out a medical explanation, it starts to interfere with her daily life. It also creates tension with her husband, Paul (Prasanna Puwanarajah), and daughter, Ashley (Mia Tharia).

She then discovers that someone else is bothered by the sound – her student, Kyle (Ollie West). It’s the beginning of an intense friendship that will eventually lead them to a charismatic couple, Jo (Gayle Rankin) and Omar (Amr Waked), who believe that being able to hear ‘the Hum’ isn’t a curse but a gift.

It’s an idea that certainly resonated with Rebecca, whose impressive (and varied) CV includes Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Prestige, The BFG and Godzilla vs. Kong.

She says: “Before even reading the scripts, I was keen to join The Listeners. It was such an odd premise where there are so many possibilities, and that was a draw for me.”

Luckily, reading the scripts made her even keener. “What I really enjoyed about the scripts is that it explores a mystery that is located in someone’s subjective experience.

“To the rest of the world if there is no way to prove an experience a person is claiming to go through the conclusion is to brand them as crazy. For Claire, a subjective experience is happening, and she is desperately hunting for answers. This throws up the question of how do you prove something that is subjective or that is felt.”

She adds: “It’s like colour, everyone experiences it differently. If a member of a family starts to experience something that everyone else in the family doesn’t, it becomes alienating and pernicious. Slowly The Hum becomes more and more dangerous and wreaks havoc.”

That may sound extreme, but Rebecca believes that many people will relate to the frustration of not being taken seriously. She says: “It was very interesting to think about how people treat women’s experiences or how people listen to a woman when she says she is going through something difficult and ultimately in pain. How it’s met with disbelief, minimised or shifted in some way, that’s explored a lot in The Listeners.”

The desire to find someone who understands can leave someone vulnerable to manipulation, which is another theme in the series. Rebecca says: “The show to me isn’t about ‘cults’, it’s much more interesting than that. As it’s more about the people who are susceptible to them. Often, it’s the people you least expect. It’s the people who are smart and have their head screwed on.”

If that’s all starting to sound a little heavy, the actress points out that viewers may find themselves getting swept up by The Listeners, even if they are sceptical to start with.

“It’s entertaining and I hope that the audience go on the journey that Claire goes on and into a land of extreme beliefs that you wouldn’t have expected someone to believe at the beginning.”