Rose Ayling-Ellis has had quite a year. Barely a month ago, she was in the BBC’s ground-breaking revenge drama Reunion. Since then, she’s appeared in a documentary spotlighting the deaf community in the UK; showed up in an episode of Doctor Who and started work on an upcoming adaptation of the Tuva Moodyson detective novels.
Now, we’ve got Code of Silence, a police thriller – and, like Reunion, a show that puts the deaf community firmly front and centre.
She plays Alison, a young woman who’s just moved back in with her mum after a sudden break-up, and who’s working multiple jobs to make ends meet – including in a police staff canteen.
Alison is (and I must stress this) not qualified in any way for investigative work, but she puts ‘lip reading’ down on her list of skills when she gets the job. And soon enough, action comes knocking: the Redman gang is plotting something, and the police need somebody to comb through CCTV footage of what various gang members are saying for clues. And because the rest of the force’s lip-reading staff (it sounds made up, but forensic speechreading is apparently a thing) is busy, Alison is called to action.
Soon enough, she’s helping DS Francis (Charlotte Ritchie) try and crack the case. Though the gang leader is in Belmarsh prison, the rest of them appear to be planning something big – and this time, they’ve called in hot tech whizz Liam (Kieron Moore) to help them out.
A hot tech whizz who happens to have a heart of gold and lives round the corner from Alison’s evening job at a pub. Soon, much to the horror of DS Francis and her boss DI James Marsh (Andrew Buchan), Alison has made the transition from observer to informant and is in good with Liam. She’s also in way over her head; the whole thing is a public inquiry waiting to happen. Oddly enough, this particular tension never really gets resolved: at least not in the first episode.
As with Reunion, the way the show presents Alison’s lived experience feels fresh and important: not a surprise, when you consider that Code of Silence was written by Catherine Moulton, who has hearing loss herself. At the start of the show, we move with Alison through the police canteen, where every noise is reduced to a muffled clang, mechanical pops go off in the background and peoples’ voices are barely audible.
It’s an effective way of portraying how difficult it is to live in a world designed solely for hearing people, and as Alison, Ayling-Ellis lets her frustration show through. “I don’t wish I could hear,” she says at one point. “I just wish the rest of the world was a little bit deaf.”
Alison’s lip-reading superpower is a result of having to guess what people are telling her every day; a neat on-screen bit of text translates the random sounds she sees to words, and then to sentences, clueing us into her thought processes.
It’s a great way of keeping us involved in the action, and while Ayling-Ellis sells it, the plot itself is all eminently silly stuff. Alison’s thrill-seeking desire to plunge ever deeper into danger doesn’t ring quite true; nor does her superiors’ willingness to let it happen despite the fact she consistently flouts police code.
Coincidences abound, and Alison seems blessed with the superpower of not only lip-reading, but doing so through grainy CCTV screens, across huge distances and at angles that would confound most people. But it’s still enjoyable, and the sheer talent of the people involved keep things absorbing. An addictive Sunday night drama.
Code of Silence is streaming now on ITV
