Featured Image Credit: BBC
Topics: TV and Film, TV, Adolescence, BBC
Michael Slavin
The team behind Adolescence have already released their newest show, with the series releasing in full on BBC iPlayer this morning.
The show is a revenge thriller with a unique twist – the main star is deaf and much of the show alternates between spoken English and British Sign Language (BSL).
Adolescence’s success has set up the producers of the show for great things, with the series sitting at 9th in Netflix’s all-time English-speaking record for viewers.
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Jack Thorne, the TV show’s writer, has taken on big budget jobs writing Tron 3 and his third Enola Holmes film for Netflix, while Stephen Graham was confirmed to be returning for the Peaky Blinders movie.
The show’s production company meanwhile, Warp Films, has already released its next show though – a revenge thriller called Reunion.
The BBC’s synopsis of the show reads: “Reunion is an emotional thriller of revenge and redemption following the journey of Daniel Brennan, played by Matthew Gurney, a deaf man determined to right his wrongs while unravelling the truth behind the events that led him to prison.”
Joined in the cast by Anne-Marie Duff, Eddie Marsan, and Lara Peake, the series has four hour-long episodes, available to watch on iPlayer now.
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Gurney, the lead actor, is deaf, and spoke to the BBC about how his role is different to others he had worked on.
He said that the character of Daniel Brennan was ‘on a wildly different journey than that portrayed by normal deaf lives’.
The actor went on to say: “In previous films, deaf and disabled characters have been portrayed in quite stereotypical ways.
"This is different, this portrays a man who is hated within the deaf community.
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“That’s why I wanted to know more about him, and that’s why I wanted to get involved."
Speaking about the character of Daniel, the show’s writer William Mager explains he ‘grew up in the deaf community’ before saying: “When he kills someone, it means he is excluded from that community, and that's the community that forms his identity.
“It becomes a double prison sentence for Brennan, he is in physical prison, but he finishes his time and is in a different kind of prison.
“That's part of the story, how he deals with that isolation and overcomes the feeling of losing everything.”
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The Financial Times gave the show four stars in their review, with particular praise for Gurney’s performance.
They said Gurney was ‘brilliantly expressive as a man caught between rage and redemption’.
The review ends saying: “There’s enough talent and fresh, hitherto under-represented perspectives here to ensure that this revenge story doesn’t feel like a dish served reheated.”
Reunion is available to watch on BBC iPlayer now.