Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The Listeners, a new four-part BBC drama, is an intense, unsettling tale about a woman whose life is upended by a persistent noise. Having spent the past few years sharing a wall with a protracted home renovation project, I know the bleary-eyed exasperation all too well. But unlike the unmistakable sound of my neighbour’s drill, the relentless drone that torments forty-something Claire (Rebecca Hall) is seemingly unheard by everyone else.Her pragmatic husband Paul (Prasanna Puwanarajah) figures it’s tinnitus; her doctor proffers a diagnosis of non-specific psychological distress. Claire insists that can’t be the cause but it quickly becomes a symptom. At first, the noise distracts her from her work as a teacher and creates tensions with sceptical Paul and her daughter (Mia Tharia). But it soon begins to seep into her subconscious, causing restless dreams and strange visions that leave her unmoored from herself and questioning her own physical senses. Directed by Janicza Bravo (Zola), the series is based on Jordan Tannahill’s 2021 novel, which the author adapts for the screen himself. The premise is the stuff of horror but the story is inspired by reports from people around the world who perceive (or rather endure) a persistent buzz they call “the hum”. Claire soon discovers that there are others experiencing the same phenomenon: namely her 17-year-old student Kyle (Ollie West), who alleviates the loneliness of her suffering. Not just because he hears what she does, but because he also sees her as more than just her role as teacher, wife, mother.An intimate and uncomfortable friendship begins to bloom, but the series judiciously avoids overplaying a tired May-December angle. Instead, it goes somewhere altogether more sinister as Claire and Kyle join a support group for fellow “listeners” run by a pseudo-shamanic couple (Amr Waked and Gayle Rankin) who equate hearing the hum with a form of enlightenment. “The world has gotten louder, but we have forgotten how to listen,” they tell Claire, who promptly closes her ears to her family’s suspicions about the group.Hall is excellent as a woman on a knife-edge between a spiritual breakthrough and a nervous breakdown. The more Claire pursues transcendence, the more her everyday existence unravels and the more uncanny The Listeners gets. Atmospheric sound design and clever editing convey the oppressiveness of the drone and Claire’s disorientation. But things take a turn for the outré in later episodes as time and space become increasingly elastic and ambiguous. The result can be alienating and sometimes narratively dissatisfying. But this is a series, rare among recent BBC offerings, that prioritises ideas over plot. We watch not to learn what the noise is but what it represents. There is no simple answer — is it a metaphor for the isolating experience of mental illness? A meditation on the human impulse to find meaning, and the attendant capacity to exploit that need? Or a commentary on our overwhelming online age where the whirr of information and clamour of opinions have drowned out what matters? Whatever you hear in the hum, it’ll resonate in your mind long after the show concludes.★★★★☆On BBC1 from November 19 at 9pm and on iPlayer; new episodes air weekly
