Code of Silence

Making great British TV drama is an uphill struggle. Yet Code of Silence is a reminder that, if there’s a smart idea on the table, winning a commission can be a doddle. After the pitch, it took just eight hours for ITV to come back to Mammoth Screen with a “yes”.

“Polly Hill [Head of Drama] and Kevin Lygo [Managing Director, Media and Entertainment] saw immediately that this was a new and arresting way to tell a contemporary story,” says Damien Timmer, Chief Creative Officer and founder of Mammoth Screen, a subsidiary of ITV Studios.

As you might expect for someone who’s Deaf, Alison Brooks (Ayling-Ellis) is a brilliant lip-reader. So good, in fact, that DS Ashleigh Francis (Charlotte Ritchie, Ghosts) and DI James Marsh (Andrew Buchan, Black Doves) have a job for her. The police have been following a gang who are planning a robbery, and careful to meet in places where listening devices can’t be planted. It falls to Brooks to watch the silent surveillance footage and decode what’s being said.

This year, the BBC is set to launch the drama Reunion (written by deaf Bristolian Billy Mager), ITV’s crime thriller Code of Silence stars deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis, and Retreat, a forthcoming BFI-funded thriller, is written and directed by Ted Evans, who is deaf, and features a deaf-led cast.

Then there’s the growing trend of deaf contributors on many of our most popular factual entertainment shows, with 2025 already seeing Imy as a contestant on The Great Pottery Throw Down and Sarah and Jon on Stacey Solomon’s Sort Your Life Out.

Rose Ayling-Ellis, who played Frankie Lewis in EastEnders, became a household name after winning Strictly Come Dancing as the show’s first deaf contestant. Fresh from presenting the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, now she is breaking more ground in a fascinating lead role: a deaf canteen worker whose lip-reading skills draw her into a high-stakes police investigation.