Listening In

Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) plays Julia, a lonely New York transplant who discovers that her home speaker is picking up her neighbors' conversations. Instead of reporting the glitch, she starts listening. And then she gets obsessed. And then things get dangerous. Sabrina Jaglom created, wrote, and directed the show, and the concept is tailor-made for audio. You are literally eavesdropping alongside Julia, hearing fragments of other people's lives through a tinny speaker. The sound design makes you complicit in her voyeurism, which is both clever and uncomfortable. Manish Dayal, Bridget Regan, and Daniel J Watts co-star, and the supporting cast adds texture to the lives Julia is secretly monitoring. Eight main episodes plus a bonus, running 19 to 25 minutes each, produced by Qcode, Automatik, and Scrap Paper Pictures. The 3.6-star rating from 945 reviews is lower than some Qcode shows, largely because the finale frustrated listeners who wanted clearer resolution. That caveat aside, the first seven episodes are a masterclass in building paranoia through audio -- the mystery deepens with each overheard conversation, and Brosnahan sells Julia's spiral from curiosity to obsession convincingly.