There’s a lot going on in ITV’s latest hit drama Code of Silence. The newest police thriller from ITV features a malicious gang, a planned robbery, an undercover investigator and a young woman with a talent for lip-reading.
It’s also got a great cast, with some big names attached. Who exactly are they? We break it down.
Alison Brooks, played by Rose Ayling-Ellis
A worker at the police canteen. According to Ayling-Ellis, Alison a deaf woman who is “living in Canterbury and working lots of different jobs to make ends meet.”
She puts down on their database that she can lip-read. “When their regular lipreader isn’t available to help them take down a gang, they turn to her and, as time goes on, she wants to be more and more involved – because what has she got to lose?”
Soon, Alison is in deep over her head in an increasingly complex case, helping investigate the Redman family: a criminal group whose attempt to rob a jewellery store went disastrously wrong some years ago. They went to ground, but now they’ve resurfaced and are causing trouble.
Ayling-Ellis, who plays Alison, is an English actor and activist. Born in 1994 in Kent, she started acting when she took prat in a filming weekend organised by the National Deaf Children’s Society. There, she met the deaf film director Ted Evans, who cast her in his 2011 film The End.
Her big break was joining EastEnders as series regular Frankie Lewis, whom she played between 2020-22. Since then, she’s gone onto appear on Strictly Come Dancing (which she won), as well as BBC revenge thriller Reunion and an episode of Doctor Who.
DS Ashleigh Francis, played by Charlotte Ritchie
Ashleigh is a detective with the Kent and Canterbury police force. As Ritchie puts it, “she's very instinctive and not fully by the book, but definitely not a maverick either… but where she excels in work, there's a marked contrast with the chaos of her home life.”
That would be the divorce that she’s going through, due to her husband’s affair – and the two children she’s trying to look after as well.
Ritchie herself is an English actor. Born in Clapham, she got into acting young – she did her final year at university whilst also filming the sitcom Fresh Meat. After that, she went onto appear in the BBC comedy Ghosts, following that up with a role as an heiress in the Netflix slasher series You.
DI James Marsh, played by Andrew Buchan
The DI on the case of the criminal Redman family. Buchan describes him as a “strong-willed, experienced DI. Knackered, overstretched, stubborn and driven, a bit of a closed book. I think work is all-consuming for him.”
As the police force dig deeper into the Redman case, Marsh also becomes increasingly reckless with Alison’s safety.
Buchan is best known for appearing as Mark Latimer in the ITV series Broadchurch, but there’s more to him than that. Born in Stockport, he trained at RADA; in 2008, he started in the ITV 1 drama The Fixer and in The Crown as Andrew Parker-Bowles.
Liam Barlow, played by Kieron Moore
Liam is Alison’s love interest, and what Kieron Moore describes as a “lone wolf”: an orphan from Manchester who has slid under the radar until now.
“He’s not ecstatic with the cards he’s been dealt and he finds everything slightly unfair. He wants more out of life,” Moore says – and he wants to use his coding skills to achieve it by working with the Redman family.
Moore himself is an actor and poet – and a former competitive boxer, which he did for 12 years. At 21, he pivoted to acting and modelling, and has previously appeared in the Peacock show Vampire Academy as Dimitri Belikov.
DC Ben Lawford, played by Nathan Armarkwei Laryea
Ben is another officer on the case. We don’t know much about him, except that he’s described as a ‘hothead’. Armarkwei Laryea, who plays him, has appeared in Doctor Who (in 2021 episode Revolution of the Daleks) and The Witcher.
Code of Silence is streaming on ITV 1 from May 18
