A 'HAUNTING' new series which centres on a teacher who can hear a sound that no one else can hear premieres tonight.
The Listeners, which is produced by Ireland’s Element Pictures, is based on the novel of the same name by Jordan Tannahill.
Tannahill has also written the adaptation, which stars Rebecca Hall as Claire, an English teacher whose life is gradually upturned by the presence of this seemingly innocuous noise.
Kyle (Ollie West) and Claire (Rebecca Hall) can both hear the noise in The ListenersDespite visiting multiple doctors, no obvious source or medical cause can be found for the humming sound.
But when discovers that her student Kyle - played by up-and-coming Irish actor Ollie West, can also hear the sound, the two strike up an unlikely friendship.
Ths week, as the show is revealed to audiences, Element Pictures’ Ed Guiney shared the inspiration behind the much-anticipated production...
Can you give us a brief overview of The Listeners?
The Listeners tells the story of Claire, a mum and a teacher. Claire has an ostensibly happy and fulfilled life, but one day she begins to hear this hum and she can't find the source of it, so it slowly begins to drive her mad. No one really believes her, until one day, she breaks down in school and says that she can hear this noise and questions whether anyone else can hear it, everyone around her is perplexed. Then subsequently, one of her students, Kyle, comes to her and states that he can hear The Hum as well. The two of them then begin this quest to figure it out.
Why did you want to adapt this story for television?
It's fascinating because it's about an ordinary person living a normal life and something seemingly small and quite insidious begins to happen to her and grows disproportionately and looms very largely in her life and the lives of those around her.
It is sort of metaphorical and there are lots of interesting themes that play out around belief, faith, what's going on in the world and what the kind of context for our lives is. We've always referred to it as genre-adjacent in that it takes some cues from horror and even sci-fi to explore big questions of our lives and humanity, but in a grounded way that we think a lot of audiences will be able to see themselves in
Those who can hear the humming come together in The ListenersWhy is now the right time for adapting The Listeners?
We live in a world that's very unstable and where a lot of our belief systems have been shattered.
It's hard to feel tethered to a truth - The Listeners very much deals with those themes.
It's about a woman who is experiencing something very intense, and initially the people around her just don't believe her.
There's a commonality of experience in that for many people.
Element Pictures co-founder Ed GuineyCan you tell us about the creatives on the series?
Jordan Tannahill is a Canadian playwright, novelist and screenwriter. The book is incredible, and he did an amazing job adapting it.
It's a contained series and we always felt like we wanted to bring a signature filmmaker to direct.
We all loved Janicza Bravo's film, Zola, and thought it was incredible.
In some ways, it’s dealing with the nature of truth and certainty in the contemporary world.
Thematically, there are strong links to The Listeners, and so we were delighted when she signed up to direct the series, as well as being an Executive Producer on it. That's been a real joy.
Rising Irish star Ollie West plays schoolboy Kyle in the seriesAnd what about the cast?
We love Rebecca Hall as our Claire.
She's known for American film work, but we wanted to try and persuade her to come and play this very British part.
She was very keen on the book, and also on working with Janicza, so we were delighted when she said yes.
Rebecca's performance is fantastic. She plays, in some ways, quite an ordinary person but who's experiencing something quite extraordinary. She does it in a way that is very inviting and generous, and she really allows audiences to empathise with what her character is going through.
Getting that role right was key and everything else kind of plays off that.
One of the big relationships in the series is between Claire and Kyle.
We cast the young Irish actor Ollie West to play that role, who is fantastic.
He was just eighteen when we shot the series and he's fab. From there, we built out a brilliant cast around them.
We shot the series around Manchester, but it’s not set anywhere specific, it is English suburbia, so with Claire’s family, neighbours and other people in the group, it was about finding people who could populate that world credibly.
Watch The Listeners on BBC iPlayer from November 19 and tune in on BBC One from 9pm tonight.
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