Ghosts's Charlotte Ritchie opens up on uniqueness of deaf-led thriller Code of Silence

The former EastEnders actor and Strictly Come Dancing winner plays Alison Brooks, a police canteen assistant who is recruited by a team of detectives for her lip-reading skills, which they hope will help them crack a notorious gang.

"I think that's something that the UK does really beautifully, these specific, quite authored, personal shows," added Ritchie. "We have had such an amazing legacy of people writing from experience and a specific vision. I had some American friends I was talking to saying they really love that about the UK, that they feel like there is still an industry for this kind of authentic storytelling.

"The fact that Cat was writing from her own experience, it just felt detailed, it felt true. I mean, I can't say if it felt true. It's not my experience. But it just felt like when I read it and I was with all these characters, they felt real to me and the details were all there."

Through Alison's impeccable lip-reading skills, the detectives are able to uncover crucial information from the gang, which is communicated via text on screen. But the words are initially jumbled up while Alison attempts to work out what's being said, which means viewers are also forced to wait for the reveal, a detail which Ritchie appreciated.

"I think it's really interesting to get the audience to have a taste of what it feels like to not be fully informed and to be slightly on the periphery of a conversation and not know the whole story straight away," she said.

"I think that that feels like an interesting parallel with some of the things that Rose has expressed about her experience as a Deaf woman. Sometimes you miss the odd thing, or if you miss the train of a conversation then you kind of have to let it go."

Ayling-Ellis described lip-reading as "a puzzle" during a press Q&A.

"So words like ‘elephant’, ‘colourful’, ‘I love you’ have the exact same lip pattern," she continued. "So if you saw someone and you lip-read them and they say, ‘I love’, then you would go, ‘I love colourful’ wouldn’t make sense, ‘I love you’ might make sense, but ‘I love elephants’ might also make sense.

"So that's how lip-reading works. But it goes so fast in your head, sometimes you don't think about it. I've been doing it all my life, so it’s never something that I think about. It's automatic. But to put it on a screen, that’s the challenge as well. So it's like a balance of yes, we want to make it authentic, but at the same time, we are creating drama and we're creating entertainment.

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"And it's never been done in this way before. We're the first to do it. So ironically, lip-reading is a puzzle, but it's also a puzzle working out how to put it on the screen."

Another detail Ritchie enjoyed was the "tension" in the dynamic between Alison and her own character, DS Ashleigh Francis.

"I love that they're both playing with this tension of what is too far," she explained. "For Ashleigh, there's this conundrum where she's having to check constantly: is she underestimating Alison? Or is she overestimating her? Is she making allowances for her Deafness? Or is she ignoring it? Where does she sit?

"She has an interesting conversation with [DI] James [Marsh, played by James Buchanan] in one of the episodes, where he says, 'Would you be treating her like this if she was hearing?' And Ashleigh doesn't know, and I think that's an important part of it."

Ritchie added: "It was representation that felt needed. It's such a groundbreaking show that obviously, it goes without saying, that it felt like a really great thing to be part of."

"Having spent years working in a police canteen and secretly observing conversations, her life takes an unexpected turn when her exceptional lip-reading skills catch the attention of DS Ashleigh Francis (Charlotte Ritchie) and DI James Marsh (Andrew Buchan)," reads the official synopsis.

"Recruited for a covert operation, Alison is tasked with surveilling a dangerous gang as they plot a high-stakes heist, thrusting her into a world of crime, deception, and risk like never before, [particularly] when she finds herself drawn to one of the suspects, Liam Barlow (Kieron Moore).

"Despite the escalating risks and threats to her personal life, Alison refuses to walk away."

Code of Silence airs on ITV1 and ITVX from Sunday 18th May 2025.

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