Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality of deaf people's experience

In the guided tour of Britain’s cathedral cities that is the primetime TV detective series, the spotlight has now landed on Canterbury. Code of Silence frequently inserts a dramatic aerial shot of the city, its streets radiating out from the towering ecclesiastical landmark at its centre, to remind us where we are.

It’s an eerily empty version of Canterbury, its streets untroubled by tourists and traffic. Our sparky heroine, Alison (Rose Ayling-Ellis), zips around it on her bike; motoring up to London for a night out  seems to be standard. At the heart of the story, though, is a real live issue: the discrimination experienced by people with hearing loss.

Alison is one such, equipped with a hearing aid, but also skilled at lip-reading (as is the series' creator, Catherine Moulton). She makes an underpaid living in the canteen at police HQ, where the manager is ever ready to find fault with her, demoting her to cleaning a filthy oven when she fails to note that a customer wanted her coffee made with nut-milk. Luckily, she is on the register of lip readers and is called in by DS Ashleigh Francis (Charlotte Ritchie, pictured below with Ayling-Ellis) to help with an investigation into a local gang. They are a wily bunch who change their SIM cards every three days and meet in noisy places where surveillance isn’t easy. 

Using CCTV, Alison is able to pass on details of a conversation they have surrounded by clattering skateboarders. Here the show’s most interesting feature goes on display: we see the phonetic syllables she can identify typed on the screen, which then dissolve and reconstitute themselves into the words actually spoken. Ayling-Ellis is a natural in this role, projecting the sheer happiness of somebody society regularly ignores or underestimates who is suddenly respected. Her joy at being part of the police team leads her, however, into an increasingly close relationship with the new member of the gang, Liam (Kieron Moore), whom she deliberately befriends by getting a job at the pub he frequents owned by another gang member, Braden (Joe Absolom).

Liam is a Mancunian, his vowel sounds amusingly confusing to Alison at first. He has been hired for his software skills. Soon they are going on dates. But her ability to carry out her surveillance role is steadily compromised as she finds herself attracted to this loner who grew up in foster homes. She soldiers on as a freelance police informant, getting deeper into the gang’s machinations each time she meets Liam. Regularly warned by Ashleigh and her boss DS James Marsh (Andrew Buchan, pictured below) not to endanger herself, naturally she ignores them.

The script throws what looks like a subplot Alison’s way, in the form of the property developers who buy the estate she and her deaf mother Julie (Fifi Garfield) live on, which will mean being evicted when their housing is flattened to make way for luxury flats. Alison communicates with her mum by (captioned) signing. Julie is jobless and wants to train for a texting service for the deaf, but there is a four-month waiting list for the training, which means the post she has been offered probably won’t still be open once she is qualified. Alison, too, has looked into becoming a lip-reader, but the fee for the police course is £4,500.

But lo, this is not just a subplot: two of the boo-hiss developers are members of the gang, one of them its leader (Beth Goddard), nicknamed Cruella by the police. Her husband is doing 10 years in Belmarsh prison for armed robbery, a raid in which a civilian was killed, and Marsh feels responsible. So Alison has a double-dip reason to help nail the gang. 

Her third motive is saving Liam. He is a beguiling character, played by Moore (pictured below with Ayling-Ellis) with an ambivalence Hitchcock would have approved of. His dark eyes can move from threat to tenderness and back in a nanosecond so the viewer senses there is more to him than your average criminal (Marsh is given a line saying that, rather hamfistedly). He has the straight-nosed profile of a figure in an Etruscan vase painting, which is surprising as he was a boxer until moving to acting when he was 21. More Moore, please.

This is the least violent OCG drama on air right now, relying on suspense instead of gore. As a heist, it’s intriguing, though its multiple switcheroos are hard to keep up with at times. The viewer is also required to suspend disbelief as Alison recklessly blunders into situations that in any other script would have her spotted and killed. However lovable Ayling Ellis makes this character, she’s also somewhat implausible. 

But although it’s not a heavyweight crime drama, it’s still worth a watch for its simulation of the deaf experience. The handling of lip-reading is fascinating, and the sound effects – muffled voices coming through as if being heard by somebody on the bottom of a swimming pool – are perfect. Look out too for a surprise cameo when Alison’s dodgy dad appears.

• All episodes of Code of Silence are available on ITVX

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