Rose Ayling-Ellis, Charlotte Ritchie, Andrew Buchan on Code of Silence

Rising British star Rose Ayling-Ellis is Alison, a deaf caterer who gets recruited to use her lip-reading skills in a covert police operation in the new ground-breaking crime thriller series Code of Silence, premiering on ITV and streamer ITVX  in the U.K. on Sunday, May 18 and on streaming service BritBox in the U.S. and Canada in July.

Created and written by Catherine Moulton (Baptiste, Hijack), who drew on her own experience with lip-reading and hearing loss, the drama also features Kieron Moore (Vampire Academy, Masters of the Air, The Corps), Charlotte Ritchie (You, Ghosts), and Andrew Buchan (Black Doves, The Honourable Woman, Broadchurch). Bryony Arnold and Damien Timmer executive produced the show for ITV Studios’ Mammoth Screen, alongside Robert Schildhouse and Stephen Nye for BritBox, as well as Ayling-Ellis and Moulton. Diarmuid Goggins (Kin, Black Cab) is the lead director on the series.

Code of Silence is allowing viewers to better understand that lip-reading is neither science nor magic. In one scene, for example, Alison asks someone to face her while talking, so she can try to understand him. ”There is a misconception about lip-reading,” Ayling-Ellis said in a recent panel discussion about the show, pointing out that lip-readers often are portrayed as perfect experts. In reality, it takes much work, effort and maybe even guesswork. “Hearing people hear the tone in people’s voices, and the tone adds different meanings to your sentence,” she notes. “But when you are lip-reading, you are getting that tone from your body language.”

To make the process of lip-reading more realistic, the series visualizes the challenge for Alison in some scenes where letters pop up on screen while she watches others from afar, with the letters then rearranging themselves in stages before ending up forming words or phrases she can make out.

Ayling-Ellis and the creative team shaped this innovative approach to take the audience inside a deaf person’s mind. “I wanted to make sure it [felt] like a puzzle you are working out,” the star shared. “Because some words look alike, for example, [in terms of lip shapes]. Elephant, colorful, and I love you have the exact same lip pattern. So if you lip-read them, you have to see what would make sense. That’s how lip-reading works, but it goes so fast in your head, sometimes you don’t think about it. It’s automatic. I’ve been doing it all my life. But to put it on a screen is a challenge.”

Buchan shared how much he learned thanks to his role as Detective Inspector James Marsh on Code of Silence. “It opened a door to a world that I knew nothing about,” he said. “It was a journey for us all. It’s definitely one of the most positive, enlightening, fantastic jobs I’ve ever done, without question. We learnt our sign of the day every day, which was magnificent and something I’ll never forget. And you realize just how many misconceptions you have.”

He loved learning from Ayling-Ellis. “Rose would tell us little things, for example, about when she has hearing aids in,” Buchan recalled. “It’s not some kind of clear, crisp sound that you might imagine or expect. It’s very muffled mechanical sounds, which is both confusing and exhausting, and if you’re in a room with 20 or 30 people, that’s just a living nightmare.”

Ritchie, who plays Detective Sergeant Ashleigh Francis, also lauded Ayling-Ellis. “I have to credit Rose with having so much patience with me and with us and being so clear about what was helpful communication and what wasn’t,” she said. “And so quite quickly, I felt like there was a kind of chemistry, which is really lovely, because you can feel that from the moment the [two characters] meet. There’s something about Allison’s character and her strength and how clever she is. … They kind of encourage each other, which is really lovely.”

Moore, who portrays Liam Bayne, a young man coming under police surveillance, also loved his time on the Code of Silence set and all the things he learned. “It’s hard to sit here and talk about the job and the impact that I have had on it when I feel like this job has impacted me way more as a person,” he shared during the panel.

Alison’s determination and ambition is something Ayling-Ellis is particularly happy with. “What a lot of deaf people experience is that the people around them are making assumptions of what they can or can’t do,” she explains. “That is a driving force for Alison. I’m working in a bar, and you think I’m grateful for that, but I want more. I want something more to do with my life.”