Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Ollie West, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Mia Tharia, Niamh McCann, Gayle Rankin, Amr Waked, Lucy Sheen, Karen Henthorn, Samuel Edward-Cook, Franc Ashman, Romy Kelleher, Akai Coleman, Lucy Chambers, Scotee, Shreya M. Patel, Kiruna Stamell, Ian Mercer, Delroy Brown, Anne Hornby, Jim Bligh, Emily Aston, Alice Kirkpatrick, George Lewis.

We are subjected to so much noise in our world today that to find silence is a gift, but one that might drive us into the arms of madness if exposed for too long in its vacuum. The sense of cutting yourself off completely from the registry of sound is appealing but not without its sensory dangers; the opposite of this is also true, a frequency that only you can hear which overloads the mind as it persists above all others, a drone of background noise that cuts above your conversation, your ability to hear without dislodging yourself from reality almost unavoidable.

Upon first glance The Listeners could have been a short series of immense magnitude, it should have gone into great depth of how the phenomenon of The Hum that has afflicted many lives around the world is perceived, encountered, and explained, instead it finds itself caught between two worlds, one of the helpless ill-considered love affair that remains thankfully unexplored, and that in which the damage of a cult like group are given time in people’s lives without a sense of rationalisation behind it.

Such a phenomenon, one that has had been highlighted via news headlines and reports across the years arguably deserves more than what has been offered, and whilst Rebecca Hall and Prasanna Puwanarajah give superb performances as a loving couple torn apart as Ms. Hall’s character of Claire starts to suffer from the intense pressure of The Hum, and the intensity of the action is shown in actors’ mannerisms as with the terrific Ian Mercer catching the need to understand the mystery, it somehow falls short of a fulfilling narrative and account. The space in between is instead filled with an emotional resonance that really and truly didn’t need to be placed within the storyline.

Whilst the filming of the four-part series is immaculate, the sense of nature and the cacophony of noise that hits us every day is justified and used accordingly to show the differences in how we register sound, it is to the unease in relationships, of how we can be used for others to feel important that grates at the issue; the dichotomy is unbalanced and unfruitful, and in the end just leaves the viewers unsatisfied with the consequences and the understanding of the piece.

The Listeners unfortunately is all show and not a word attended to in the same equal fashion.

Ian D. Hall