Code of Silence is a Deaf-led crime thriller that gets representation right

A team of detectives are racing against the clock to stop a notorious gang from carrying out their next – and biggest – heist, and with all of their usual lip-readers tied-up with other jobs, they turn to Alison, who signed up to a skills database when she first started working at the station.

With the gang often meeting in locations that make listening in an impossibility, the detectives need her to fill in the blanks by studying CCTV feeds and hidden cameras. And despite their initial scepticism about whether she's up to the job, a running theme in her life, Alison's contributions immediately move the needle.

But she's quick to point out that lip-reading isn't a superpower, but a highly valuable skillset that, like most things, has its limitations and before long, she takes it upon herself to do some sleuthing of her own by making contact with Liam Barlow (Vampire Academy's Kieron Moore), the newest and youngest member of the gang, which is when Code of Silence really kicks into gear.

But while the lip-reader-turned-detective premise is an instantly compelling one and is brilliantly suited to creating moments of intrigue and tension, what makes the ITV series such a vitally important piece of television is what it has to say about disability.

While Alison has a very particular set of skills, which she's instinctively acquired from being a Deaf person in a hearing world, that's not what makes her a captivating character, or even what ends up driving the narrative forwards.

It isn't Alison's Deafness that motivates her to take up DS Ashleigh Francis's (Ghosts' Charlotte Ritchie) initial offer to help the detectives crack the case, or what motivates her to secure a job at The Canterbury Tap, or why she continues surveilling the gang even after DI James Marsh (Broadchurch's Andrew Buchanan) initially fires her for jeopardising the investigation.

Instead, it is her intelligence, fearlessness, ambition, charm, resolve and quick-wittedness that not only makes her immensely fun to watch, and a lead you immediately get behind, but what largely forces key developments.

Now, that's not to say that being disabled in a world that isn't built for her would undoubtedly have forced Alison to toughen up, so to speak, so as not to allow society to ignore her or infantilise her or take advantage of her. It's likely that Alison's determination and confidence would have been emboldened due to navigating spaces and situations that disregard her very existence.

But regardless, that's not the whole picture. Those aforementioned characteristics are intrinsic to who she is. The seeds were always there, and Alison chose to water them.

By writing the character of Alison as she has, Catherine Moulton, who is partially Deaf and a skilled lip-reader herself, not only avoids making her lead's Deafness all that she is – for none of us, disabled or otherwise, could possibly be boiled down to one single thing – she has also avoided turning Alison's disability into a source of inspiration or 'inspiration porn', as it's often referred to, a ghastly trope that has long plagued stories which feature disabled people.

To portray her as impressive or captivating simply because she's Deaf would not only disregard so much of who she is and what else she brings to the table, it perpetuates the notion that disabled people aren't capable of living a normal life, and they're unlikely to achieve anything, so that when they do, it is something to marvel at and behold.

But you won't find any of that 'in spite of' nonsense here. Instead, Moulton embraces all that Alison is, from those elements of her that sit apart from her Deafness to those which are inexorably bound up with it, but not at the expense of crafting a riveting crime thriller, which makes the series doubly impressive.

In a TV landscape which is still sorely lacking in disabled representation, Code of Silence is the blueprint.

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

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.