Jordan Tannahill's new TV series The Listeners was inspired by a strange 'hum' heard in Windsor, Ont.

Here & Queer is a Canadian Screen Award-winning talk series hosted by Peter Knegt that celebrates and amplifies the work of LGBTQ artists through unfiltered conversations.

Jordan Tannahill is an artistic force of nature. Queer Canadians have been well aware of this for a long time, whether it was through his involvement in the creation of the Toronto multidisciplinary arts hub Videofag in 2012 or for becoming this country's youngest two-time winner of the Governor General's Award for drama in 2018 (among many other distinctions). But now, the world is catching up. This month, Tannahill's first foray in television, The Listeners, which he adapted from his own award-winning novel, debuts on the BBC. And it's already receiving rave reviews.

Tannahill stopped by the set of Here & Queer back when The Listeners had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September (as part of their television-focused program, Primetime) to talk about the series and his incredible journey to it. Watch the full episode below:

Both the novel and the series version of The Listeners (written by Tannahill and directed by Janicza Bravo) follows Claire Devon, who is played beautifully in the series by Rebecca Hall. Devon is a woman whose life and beliefs are drastically altered when she starts hearing "the hum."

"'The hum' was something that I originally heard about from the Windsor Hum, which is an actual hum that was afflicting residents of Windsor, Ont., for many years," Tannahill says. "And they were talking about it being a kind of low vibrating sound that would rattle their windows and keep them up at night and cause nosebleeds and headaches. But the thing that really fascinated me was that, in some cases, only one or two people from a family would hear it. And so it almost kind of resembled psychosomatic symptoms — symptoms that were disbelieved by others when the source of the hum was untraceable. It was called into question whether it really existed at all. I think that ambiguity really intrigued me."

Tannahill's international success has not made him forget his Toronto roots, or how imperative that era was to his development as an artist.

"I think about that time often," he says, referring to his years at Toronto arts hub Videofag. "It was so formative for me and for William Ellis, who I made the space with. We were partners at the time and we lived behind [the space], which was essentially this barber shop that we turned into this kind of performance space with a little cinema and gallery." 

Tannahill says what was really important for him and Ellis was to make Videofag "purely about community and experimentation," as well as supporting artists who weren't getting the opportunity to show their work elsewhere. 

"I think that, having lived in London and now living in New York, it feels like a lot of artists are on a kind of track even before they go to university," he says. "It's like, 'get into this school' and 'get this residency,' and then, 'get programmed here' or 'published by this place.' And that was just never our concern here. We weren't making art for those reasons. We were just making art for the hell of it and for supporting our friends and to be inspired by each other. And I really value that now. I think it has really shaped what I focus my priorities on, and about following a kind of curiosity as opposed to an ambition."