Sound designer Steve Fanagan tells David Davies how the soundscape behind the recent BBC One series, The Listeners, was created
By Contributor
Published: January 10, 2025 Updated: January 13, 2025
Sound designer Steve Fanagan tells David Davies how the soundscape behind the recent BBC One series, The Listeners, was created
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
There have been many instances of innovative TV sound design in recent years, but it's hard to imagine there will be another series where it's more fundamental to every facet of the story and production than is the case with The Listeners. Broadcast on BBC One at the end of last year and available on iPlayer until November 2025, the four-part drama combines field recordings, vivid audio processing, a haunting new score from Devont Hynes, and existing music from seminal artists including Nick Drake and Richard and Linda Thompson to frequently astonishing effect.
Adapted by Jordan Tannahill from his own acclaimed 2021 novel, but with the action transferred from the US to the UK, The Listeners begins with English teacher Claire - played by Rebecca Hall - becoming acutely aware of a continuous humming noise that is apparently only heard by a relatively small number of people. What follows is a brilliantly unusual and affecting drama from director Janicza Bravo that variously evokes classic psychological thrillers, folk-horror, and even 1970s public information films like The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water.
Steve Fanagan, sound designer, The Listeners, image courtesy BBC Sound designer for the series is Steve Fanagan, whose credits in this role - and/or as a supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer - include Normal People, Swan Song and An Cail n Ci in/The Quiet Girl. It was wonderful to get to work on something that is as subjective and crafted as The Listeners, he says. I think Janicza is an incredible, visionary director, and that's apparent in all of her work. She's a very detailed person so there's nothing that isn't thought about, and that idea of meticulousness has translated to the sound work, where I hope that the sound feels deliberate and all the choices are about pushing the story forward. It's not sound for sound's sake, but instead something that's built into the narrative and is justified by the story unfolding on the screen.
Finessing The Hum' Inevitably, determining the noise as it appears to Claire was a high priority for the sound design. Research into the real-world phenomenon known as The Hum played a part, but with reports of frequency ranges differing around the world, as well as theories about its causes, there was always going to be a significant creative aspect here. So the starting point was a conversation with Janicza about what sort of sound this might be, how the character might be experiencing it, and the ways in which it could be used not only to represent the idea of a sound Claire is hearing or experiencing but also how it might evolve and change depending on where she is on her journey in the story.
So as might be expected, the initial awareness of the sound feels huge - very distracting and grating, and affecting Claire's ability to concentrate. It begins to affect her home life so that had to be reflected in a certain way sonically, but as the series progresses and she finds out that one of her students, Kyle [played by Ollie West], can also hear it, you have the first point where she begins to feel some relief - and so the hum becomes something that's a little more harmonised.
Ollie West and Rebecca Hall in The Listeners. Image courtesy BBC As the story twists and turns, so does the hum and its position in the overall soundworld. For the actual filming, Fanagan provided a collection of sounds that could be used on set as a reference point to help [the relevant actors] become distracted in the moment . Then, during post, the form of the noise continued to mutate with different treatments and processing - reflecting a wider ethos of perpetual revision to the series as it neared finalisation.
We were always working across the four episodes in post, confirms Fanagan. So if there was something we discovered in episode four that we were enjoying and thought was working, we might figure out a version of it that could be planted as a little seed in an earlier episode. And that helped it evolved into this much bigger, kind of transcendental sound.
Built into the script But as the first few minutes of the opening episode indicate - when Richard and Linda Thompson's glorious I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight bursts onto the soundtrack, and Claire and her daughter begin to sing along with it - music is also integral to the sound of The Listeners. Along with other existing tracks by artists including Nick Drake and This Mortal Coil, there is an innovative original score by Devont Hynes, who has also recorded prolifically under the names Blood Orange and Lightspeed Champion.
With a lot of the existing music - such as the Nick Drake track [Fly] we hear as the original recording and then played by [Ollie West], who learned how to perform it for the series - it was very much built into the DNA of the writing and the shooting, which was really useful, says Fanagan.
Then, with the original score, Janicza and the producers were very keen for me to be involved in the conversations with Dev, so that if he was asking about things that we might be experimenting with from a sound design point of view I could let him know what we were working on, and if he had concerns about frequencies I was hitting that he needed to hit - or vice versa - we could talk about all of those things. This was really useful because the sound design was always evolving with the picture. Sometimes you want it to not be obv
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
02/06/2026
Tennis Channel has completed a transition from satellite-based distribution to a...
02/06/2026
Daktronics has announced the 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day educational event for high school educators and student production teams, taking place Jun...
02/06/2026
Fandango will bring Telemundo's live Spanish-language coverage of the FIFA W...
02/06/2026
All Women's Sports Network (AWSN) has announced the live television schedule...
02/06/2026
Spalk, a cloud-based multilingual commentary and production platform, has announced three new partnerships: Ligue 1 (English and Portuguese highlights), Eurolea...
02/06/2026
NHL Network's 2026 Stanley Cup Final coverage began June 1 with NHL Tonight: Stanley Cup Final Media Day from the Carolina Hurricanes' Lenovo Center at ...
02/06/2026
Matrox Video has announced the Maevex MGX Series, a lineup of IPMX-ready video e...
02/06/2026
Marshall Electronics will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7521), showcasing a lineup of 4K and HD compact POV cameras for corporate, education, hospitality, wo...
02/06/2026
The Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA) and Shure Incorporated have...
02/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C50...
02/06/2026
Advanced Systems Group (ASG) has announced the promotion of Joe Marchitto to Western Regional CTO. In his new role, Marchitto will oversee system design across ...
02/06/2026
The NHL has announced that Brothers Osborne will headline a free outdoor concert...
02/06/2026
CP Communications has announced the appointment of its first two female executives in the company's 40-year history. Tabitha Coleman has been named Vice Pre...
02/06/2026
The Lighting Design Group (LDG) has announced the completion of Studio C at Yahoo's headquarters at 770 Broadway in Manhattan. The studio launched April 24 ...
02/06/2026
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (Z) has announced a partnership with FIFA to broadcast FIFA World Cup 2026, FIFA World Cup 2030, FIFA Women's World Cup 2...
02/06/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, including new deals, departures, and assignments compiled from press releases and repo...
02/06/2026
The department is broadcasting NCAA Baseball Super Regionals at Plainsman Park this weekend
Broadcast and production crews at Division I institutions are busy ...
02/06/2026
The initiative is extends beyond the league's arenas to team training rinks,...
02/06/2026
Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Pen lope Cruz, and Edward Norton appear in The Invite by Olivia Wilde, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. (Co...
02/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
02/06/2026
Powerful new vocal-production tool announced
Described as a vocal performance station , Klevgrand's latest plug-in combines pitch-correction with harmo...
02/06/2026
Launched alongside Go Green sale extension
McDSP have just released the latest addition to their APB line-up, DC-2 Dual Compressor, and have also announced ...
02/06/2026
Create custom tools for Ableton Live 12 Suite
Ableton have just introduced a new open JavaScript toolkit that allows anyone to create their own custom tools...
02/06/2026
Now features full H90 algorithm library
Eventide have announced the upcoming launch of the H9 Harmonizer Gen 2, a new and improved version of their hugely p...
02/06/2026
Plus UAD Half Yearly Sale now live
The latest arrival to the Universal Audio range delivers a new native pitch-correction plug-in that's capable of deli...
02/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz to present comprehensive performance, conformance and spectrum-m...
02/06/2026
BTL Laboratory becomes Taiwan's first test house with a CTIA Certification c...
02/06/2026
blueCORE standalone processors headline solutions designed to simplify the trans...
02/06/2026
If you've kept up with this article series, you know by now where to start w...
02/06/2026
With new DSP configurations and flexible licensing options, Calrec is removing the barriers to virtualised audio, giving broadcasters the freedom to scale produ...
02/06/2026
The TV agency was one of the earliest adopters of Nielsen's local television...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Grass Valley today announced that Australian News Channel (ANC), operator of Sky News Australia, has deployed Grass Valley AMPP to transform its newsroom produc...
02/06/2026
Studio Technologies, a leading manufacturer of high-quality audio, video, and fiber-optic solutions, announces its new Model 385 Mic/Intercom Beltpack. The Mode...
02/06/2026
The Riedel Group today announced the appointment of Gudrun Scharler as CEO of Riedel Networks. She succeeds Michael Martens, who has led Riedel Networks since 2...
02/06/2026
More signals, higher quality, and outstanding ingest and streaming flexibility deliver professional results in a small, all-in-one footprint...
02/06/2026
farmerswife will be featured on the Modena Media & Entertainment stand at this year's Mediatech Africa 2026, giving visitors an opportunity to explore the l...
02/06/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17 19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Wuppertal June 2, 2026
Gudrun Scharler Appointed CEO of Riedel Networks The Riedel Group today announced the appointment of Gudrun Scharler as CEO of Riedel N...
02/06/2026
Back to All News
Discover Your Next Book-to-Screen Obsession With Our New Dedicated Hub
Product
02 June 2026
Global
Link copied to clipboard
Dear most vor...
02/06/2026
New LinkedIn Data: 90% of C-Suite Leaders are Continuously Building Skills to Lead in the AI Era Published on Jun 2, 2026 Categories: Data and insights
Lin...
02/06/2026
Trust has become a commercial issue With global advertising spend forecast to exceed US$1 trillion this year*, the commercial consequences of weak governance co...
Sound designer Steve Fanagan tells David Davies how the soundscape behind the recent BBC One series, The Listeners, was created
