People assume communication is just listening and speaking... there is so much more depth to it

Rose Ayling-Ellis and her co-stars discuss the joy of making a show that champions lip readers, with new ITV crime drama Code Of Silence. By Ella Walker

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ON THE set of new ITV crime drama Code Of Silence, the cast and crew learned a new word in British Sign Language (BSL) every day.

However, star Rose Ayling-Ellis, who is deaf, had some ground rules.

"I really tried to avoid teaching rude words because often that's the only one people remember, and they don't remember anything else,” says the former EastEnders actor, 30. “So [I told them], 'You can only learn your rude words when you learn more useful ones!'"

Rose, who played Frankie in the BBC soap from 2020-2022, is the lead in Code Of Silence, which is told from the perspective of her character, Alison Brooks - a deaf woman who is working in a police canteen when her talent for lip-reading is spotted.

Stockport-born Andrew Buchan, 46, stars as DI James Marsh, while Ghosts and You actress Charlotte Ritchie, 35, plays DS Ashleigh Francis, who together recruit Alison to help them surveil a highly dangerous gang.

But what starts out as a covert job becomes an increasingly fraught and highly pressurised scenario.

Andrew says learning a word of the day was “magnificent” and found the whole concept of lip-reading fascinating.

But after a research deep-dive, he realised that what Alison is asked to do in the show is “unfathomable and farcical” when compared with the work of trained forensic lip-readers who are “highly sought after by law enforcement. “They spend hours analysing video after video of CCTV footage trying to catch killers, rapists”, he says.

Alison, meanwhile is “in no way experienced to do this” and his character, DI Marsh, is a “very blunt, monomaniacal, driven, impatient,” boss, who is recklessly “enlisting the help of this complete wildcard who could derail the whole thing”.