Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Reunion is in many ways an archetypal revenge tragedy. Revolving around an individual who’s so consumed with rectifying the injustices of the past that he compromises his chance for a better future, it’s a tale that’s been told for centuries. But never quite like this.Created by deaf screenwriter William Mager, the BBC four-parter is one of the first major primetime dramas to be performed largely using British Sign Language. A landmark show in that regard, it is also one of nuance and understated power that ably combines insight into the everyday experience of deaf people with broader themes of trauma, familial estrangement and institutional failings. It is a story as much about struggling to open up as it is about the physical inability to hear.The series follows Daniel Brennan (deaf actor Matthew Gurney), newly paroled after being convicted of killing an old schoolmate — a crime he admitted to, but never explained. Having spent the past 10 years unable to communicate with his fellow inmates, he re-emerges into the outside world to find himself alone. He is unable to forge a connection with his now-adult daughter Carly (Lara Peake, who both speaks and signs), and ostracised by the deaf community in Sheffield that was once like a family to him. Only his victim’s wife, Christine (Anne-Marie Duff), wants to see him, in the hope of finally learning why her husband died.Daniel too is on a quest for closure that begins, ominously, with the purchase of a gun. Whom he is searching for and why is teased out gradually through flashbacks as the story builds towards an emotional confrontation. But the show itself is less interested in the uncertainty surrounding Daniel’s crime than the sad reality of how buried pain can explode years later and shatter lives. Gurney is brilliantly expressive as a man caught between rage and redemption; the need to divulge and the instinct “to stay quiet” — something typically more ingrained in deaf people, the series suggests. He shares a moving dynamic with Peake as Carly accompanies her father on a journey in which their tentative attempts at rebuilding a relationship are threatened by Daniel’s secret, potentially self-destructive plan.That authenticity is not always matched by a fairly conventional plot that contains a few too many contrivances and coincidences — not least involving Christine’s ex-cop boyfriend (Eddie Marsan). But 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.★★★★☆On BBC1/iPlayer on April 7 at 9pm
