Claire Hartnell

One of the most incredible things I’ve watched all year. The Listeners speaks to the deep longing for connection & meaning that we lose in our clean, neat, ordered, empty lives. This is a story about the disordering of that order. About the deep connection we can find if we break free. Strongly Buddhist in its sensibility but at times frightening & filled with foreboding. There is, of course, a concurrent - more topical theme about conspiracy, magical thinking and the vulnerability of those struggling in and out of poor mental health when drawn by charismatic people substituting for family. The Listeners tantalises with its backstory hinting at dark deeds and falsehoods but it does not resolve the point. You are, throughout, invited to empathise with the sad but magnificent & beautiful misfits drawn to the ‘hum’ … in many ways it is a darker, sadder, less optimistic version of the OA - and I think strongly influenced by that show. But certainly not lesser. The sound design is incredible - itself a character in a sparsely peopled show. As for the acting … acting seems too small a word to describe the space inhabited by the main players. Rebecca Hall and Ollie West give us a love story for the ages. So tender and ambiguous - transcending the tropes of their age or gender roles. There is something of Forster’s mismatched lovers endlessly trying to escape their chains in the central plot. The supporting cast are also point perfect. Each delivers a fully rounded character study in a handful of lines or scenes. This show is stunning, unnerving, beguiling and brave. Those who feel the hum have rewarded it with 5 stars. If you are not hearing it by Episode 2, you never will.

I had to watch Shogun again because of my unforgivable sin of scrolling through it the first time. This is not a show that permits passive attention. It is a show - indeed a world - that demands complete absorption. Second time round, some of my fog on the plot cleared. Or to put it more accurately, I discovered that the show deliberately disorients you. It throws you into an already laden world that you think you understand - and don’t until the final 30 minutes. I think we, the audience, are expected to identify with John Blackthorne. We arrive brash, expecting to be entertained, thinking we are in control. By the end, like Blackthorne, we submit to the intensity of the world, reading meaning into every leaf as it shakes on a tree & every carefully contained emotion. As other posters have noted, the show design is exquisite, the cast magnificent & the story slow but increasingly powerful. But for me, the most precious moments were the rituals - the tea ceremony, the geisha house, the assemblies of Regents. Just an incredible series that had me pining to go back to Japan.

An incredible, smart show about abuse, abusers & the cycle that keeps it all going. Remarkable that no character is judged or caricatured. Each is allowed to express his/her trauma through behaviour (the dad reveal is especially clever). Gadd shows the complex relationship that exists between abusers & abused & the fine line between consent & grooming. He expresses his guilt & shame but does not hide behind it. Although there were many moments where I felt manipulated, I sensed that this was part of the show’s note perfect structure. Literally, the audience was led up a path in the first 3 episodes and then, like the characters, could not walk away. This show will stay with me for a long time & Gadd has done a service, I think, by showing the many ways that people express their pain.