BBC tunes into The Listeners

FIRST LOOK: Rebecca Hall stars in The Listeners, a new drama based on the novel by Jordan Tannahill that is set to debut on BBC One and BBC iPlayer later this year.

Tannahill has also written the adaptation, which is produced by Element Pictures (Normal People) and directed by Janicza Bravo (Zola).

The series centres around Claire (Hall), a popular English teacher, who begins to hear a low humming sound that no one else around her can hear.

This seemingly innocuous noise gradually upsets the balance of her life, increasing tension between herself and her husband, Paul, and daughter, Ashley. But despite multiple doctors, no obvious source or medical cause can be found. When she discovers that a student of hers, Kyle (Ollie West), can also hear the sound, the two strike up an unlikely and intimate friendship. Finding themselves increasingly isolated from their families, friends and colleagues, they fall in with a disparate group of neighbours, led by a charismatic couple, Jo and Omar, who also claim they can hear The Hum – and who believe it could be a gift, heard only by a “chosen few.”

The series also features Prasanna Puwanarajah, Amr Waked, Gayle Rankin, Mia Tharia, Franc Ashman, Samuel Edward Cook, Karen Henthorn, Lucy Sheen and Ian Mercer.

Tannahill and Bravo are executive producers alongside Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Chelsea Morgan Hoffmann and Rachel Dargavel for Element Pictures, Rebecca Ferguson for the BBC, and Alice Birch. The series is produced by Ed King (His House, Suspect, Howl).

Global sales will be handled by Fremantle.

tagged in: BBC, Element Pictures, Fremantle, Rebecca Hall, The Listeners