TIFF24: First Look at Janicza Bravo‘s “The Listeners”
This review was originally posted on TV Obsessive.
As part of the Primetime section of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, the first two episodes of the upcoming series, The Listeners, premiered to a packed theater. The series is based on the 2021 bestselling novel of the same name by Jordan Tannahill, who has been heralded as one of the most exciting writers in recent years. The Listeners is his second novel and was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize.
The Listeners centers on Claire’s (Rebecca Hall) simple life of tranquility and routine. She wakes up next to her husband (Prasanna Puwanarajah), makes her coffee, and drives her daughter (Mia Tharia) to the school where she also works. All in all, things are good in Claire’s life, but out of nowhere, she begins to hear a low humming noise. What starts as an odd sound turns into something maddening. There’s nowhere she can go to escape the sound, and she’s also the only one who can hear it. Or so she thinks.
After mentioning the sound in class, one of her students, Kyle (Ollie West), approaches her and admits that he hears it too. The two form an odd relationship, one that must be secret in order to keep her job safe. They begin to search the web and travel around their sleepy town to see if they can figure out where the sound is coming from. What they come across is a support group led by two people (Amr Waked & Gayle Rankin) who claim they are “Listeners” and that this sound exists for a specific purpose. What that purpose is and the source of the sound are questions that will hopefully be solved as the series progresses.
courtesy of TIFF
After the first two episodes, a short promo for the rest of the season played, and it seems as though the show will be exploring the mentality of cults and conspiracy theories. Why do people join a cult? Why do people believe in strange explanations? What are they searching for that they cannot find elsewhere? In the case of The Listeners, there’s a desperation baked into this search for meaning. Claire and Kyle are losing sleep, feeling isolated from their friends and families, and struggling at school. They find an immediate relief when they learn they aren’t alone. Even more relief when they see that there are more people like them.
Throughout history, humans have yearned for explanations. In the 1960s, there was a boom of cults and personality figures who amassed large followers. It feels as though Covid is the beginning of a similar era. Conspiracy theories are on the rise, and social media makes it far too easy for stories to spread. We are inundated with too much information, which makes media literacy both essential and exceedingly difficult to teach. In addition to that, with medical, environmental, and military concerns on the rise, there is a widespread fear of the future. This is the perfect breeding ground for the 1960s to repeat itself and, by the looks of it, The Listeners is exploring our current moment in time through a strange, science-fiction lens.
The Listeners is helmed by Janicza Bravo, who is most known for her incredible work on Zola. The coloring and the title style of the series are reminiscent of the recently released Longlegs. The episodes are marked by red Roman numerals over lush, grainy images of a picturesque small town. The low hum works its way through the other sounds of the series to root itself into the minds of the audience. It lulls and irritates the viewer, as it does to Claire. The sound design of the series is rightly something to write home about. In a show called The Listeners, Steve Fanagan‘s sound design encourages the audience to pay attention to everything. To try and find the hidden piece that may or may not be found in the low hum.
Looking to the future of The Listeners, the most obvious desire is to know what’s going on. The audience is put in the shoes of Claire, who is just as desperately positing what this sound means and how to get rid of it. Perhaps it’s personal interest, but the idea of creating community on the fringes is something that always provides a compelling setting for a story. Only time will tell in the case of The Listeners. There is currently no release date available for the series, but it will play on BBC One.
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