[Editor's note: The following contains major spoilers for Code of Silence.]

Summary In the crime drama 'Code of Silence,' deaf lip-reader Alison helps police surveil a criminal gang while juggling family and money worries. Her lip-reading fuels the investigation but sparks a dangerous, complicated romance with Liam, who's directly involved with the case. The show portrays authentic deaf life and lip-reading onscreen, and they've already greenlit Season 2.

From creator/writer Catherine Moulton, the crime drama Code of Silence, currently available to stream on BritBox, follows Alison Brooks (Rose Ayling-Ellis), a deaf woman struggling to make ends meet for her and her mother. When she's asked to use her lip-reading skills on a high-stakes police investigation involving a criminal gang, she quickly proves herself to be useful and valuable. But the more clues she's able to pass along, the deeper she gets drawn in and the closer she gets to one of the suspects, Liam Bayne (Kieron Moore). Even though Alison knows how dangerous it is, she just can't turn her back on her feelings for him, as he also feels a genuine connection for her, making everything more complicated.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Moulton discussed drawing from her own experience with deafness and lip-reading for the series, the inspiration she took from Happy Valley and The Conversation, collaborating with Ayling-Ellis, their approach to representing the lip-reading onscreen, building the complication dynamic between Alison and Liam, that touching courtroom moment in the finale, and continuing Alison's story in a Season 2 (which will hopefully eventually also stream on BritBox).

'Code of Silence' Was Inspired by the Series Creator's Own Experience With Deafness and Lip-Reading "Lip-reading is quite tiring and challenging."

Collider: You've turned being partially deaf and wanting to learn how to lip-read into a TV series. It just seems very cool to turn something that you're dealing with in your own life into a series that other people that have gone through or are going through the same thing can watch and see themselves in. How did you find the experience of drawing from yourself in that way and using that to inspire this whole thing?

CATHERINE MOULTON: That's what writers are always doing, in a way. Anything that happens to you, you're like, "How can I put this on the show? How can I use this?" I've been lip-reading since childhood because that's when I had hearing loss. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I was doing it quite instinctively. It wasn't until I had lip-reading lessons later in life because I just wanted to get better at it because the hearing in my right ear was progressing a little bit. I really did it as a way of getting better in meetings and social situations that were getting a little bit tricky. If you're in the pub with lots of background noise, it was getting harder.

When I had the lessons, I suddenly realized, because lip-reading is quite tiring and challenging if you're doing it all day, how much work that lip readers do. I hadn't realized exactly what was going on. About 30 to 40 percent of speech is visible on your lips, and everything else is looking at a person's facial expressions, their body language, what you know about them, and what situation you're in. You're just getting all this information and putting it together in a big puzzle. That just made me think that's what detectives do, so why hasn't there been a crime show that focuses on a lip-reader? That just made me very excited, because I have always loved watching crime shows, to come up with something that felt really personal to me, but also something that hadn't been done. When scenes start immediately popping into your head, then you know that you're onto a good idea.

I really enjoy British crime dramas because they feel unexpected and a bit dangerous. They're willing to go places, kill characters, and do things that we don't expect to see. Were there any British crime dramas that you watched that you took inspiration from?

MOULTON: Writers and shows that you love always inform what you do. Happy Valley is one that I really love because that put the character of Catherine Cawood at the very center of the show. It was partly about her work, and partly about her personal life. I suppose you can see that that's a similar thing to what I'm doing with Alison in this show. I was really inspired by the American film The Conversation. That really informed some of the surveillance sequences and the lip-reading. In The Conversation, they're doing it with snippets of audio and we're doing it with snippets of lip speech, but that was exciting. You take inspiration from lots of different places.

You wrote an outline for this and gave it to Rose Ayling-Ellis to read early on, before you had actual scripts. How detailed was that outline? How much did you already know of the story and the character, and how much really came out of her input and her ideas? How did she also shape things?

MOULTON: It was probably a five- or six-page outline that outlined the character and her frustration with her life and her desire to prove herself. The fact that she would be lip-reading for the police was in there, and the fact that she would have a relationship with Liam, who was involved in the crime, was there. It was just so amazing to have Rose on board in that early stage because it meant that I knew I was writing for Rose. My experience of deafness is different from Rose's, and it was often me saying, "This is what I would be feeling in that situation, but what would you feel?" And Rose had so much input, in terms of the character. There were certain things that I wouldn't have thought of, that she thought of. It was a really lovely collaboration, in that respect.

I also really loved how much insight and understanding you give us into Alison and her world. We get a real feel for what it's like, with her having the hearing aids, when she doesn't have them in, when she's communicating via sign language with other people, and when she's lip-reading as she's putting everything together. Did all of that very naturally fall into place as you told the story? What was the process for figuring out the best way for hearing viewers like me to understand what her life would be like and what the lip-reading was like?

MOULTON: Some of those things came quite naturally. We did want to portray what her home life would be like and what her romantic life would be like. We made sure that there were other deaf people in the show, like her mother Julie (Fifi Garfield) and her ex-boyfriend Eithan. It felt really important that we were showing different kinds of deaf characters. Julie relies much more on BSL sign language and Alison moves more between the two worlds, in that she's more comfortable with signing, but she can lip-read. Showing the texture of her life felt really important. Because Rose and I have experience with that stuff in our lives, those were the easy things. It was making that work with the crime show that was the harder work. How do you build a set of clues that take you through the crime story and intrigue you and build your picture of what's going on through lip-reading? That was more of a challenge.

Because this is a project that I'm guessing you felt very personally connected to, what was it like to then hand it over to a director, especially one who does not come from the deaf world?

MOULTON: It was possibly easier, just because Diarmuid [Goggins], our director, is very engaging. He was very open and would be like, "Well, I'm not deaf. I don't pretend to know how to be deaf. So, you tell me what you want and what's important." We had a very close relationship. And that continued with our second block director, Chanya Button. They were both very open to learning about the deaf world. They didn't want to impose anything that didn't feel right to me and to Rose. We had lots of conversations, along the way. Diarmuid had a conversation with Rose about what Alison's internal world would sound like, and Rose put in a little device that recorded a scene, as far as what she's hearing through her hearing aids, and gave that to the sound team, so they were able to use that to base the sound design on. It was about having lots of very open conversations about every aspect of it.

The Relationship Between 'Code of Silence's Alison and Liam Is a Complicated One "Neither of them can trust each other."

The relationship between Alison and Liam is complicated, to say the least. There's really an inner conflict that they have with each other, for different reasons. She doesn't trust him because she knows who he is from the beginning, but he doesn't trust her because he doesn't really know who she is. What did you most enjoy about building that dynamic and taking those characters on that journey?

MOULTON: I just thought it was really fun to have a relationship where they're very drawn to each other, but because of the situation they're in, neither of them can trust each other. It felt really important that both of them were equally in the wrong, in terms of the relationship. Alison has been informing on him and she's been using her relationship with him in order to bolster her usefulness to the police. But equally, he hacked her hearing aids. It felt like the balance needed to be that neither of them is worse than the other. It was really important that she wasn't a victim, in any way.

I love that Alison is not a victim, but she's also not manipulative. There's a genuine connection between Alison and Liam that makes things even more interesting.

MOULTON: It makes it harder in emotional terms, if you genuinely like someone. She really wants to say to him, "Just don't do this because the police are watching you," but that's the thing that she can't say to him.

There's something so interesting about the dynamic between Alison and Ashleigh. When Alison comes into the police station, she's someone they've never worked with and she's not a professional, but Ashleigh sees something in her and wants to give her a chance. What did you enjoy about exploring their dynamic?

MOULTON: With the police, I really wanted to explore the tension around whether the police should empower Alison or protect her. That's always the conversation around people with disabilities. How much do you need to give people the chance to show what they can do, and how much do you need to help people? Playing that out in a thriller narrative felt really fun. James actually ends up being the one who wants to empower Alison more, whereas Ashleigh is more concerned because she sees that the connection to Liam could be a dangerous thing.

Seeing both Alison and Liam in the courtroom at the end as he's pleading guilty, and watching them sign with each other because he's teaching himself how to communicate better with her, was so oddly sweet in a story like this. Did you always know where you wanted to leave their relationship? Why did that feel like the right place to leave them?

MOULTON: I always knew that he would ask her to go away with him. It felt like the right place to end because we wanted to feel that ultimately her trust and her affection for Liam was well-placed. She wasn't being an idiot. There was something about him where he was genuinely a good guy. It felt like a nice place to leave it because who wouldn't want a boyfriend that would learn sign for you? It's so adorable, isn't it?

A Second Season of 'Code of Silence' Will Continue to Tell Alison's Story "It will be really fun to continue the story."

You also have a moment where she's given this money for her work and efforts, and it's so nice to see her get that for all her hard work. But the suggestion of her taking a course because she'll be in demand definitely sets things up to continue with this series.

MOULTON: Yeah, for sure. We can say that we are doing a second [season]. It's very, very early days, so I'm outlining it. There's a lot more to do with Alison, so it will be really fun to continue the story.

Was that something you knew you wanted to do, from the beginning? Did you set things up for that possibility?

MOULTON: We always intended it to return, if the first series did well. It just felt like a new way to do a crime show, and there's a lot you can do with it. We'll be looking at a new case next time. It's renewable, in that way.

Your Rating close 10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Rate Now 0/10 Like Follow Followed Code of Silence Crime Drama Mystery 10.0/10 Release Date May 18, 2025 Cast Rose Ayling-Ellis Alison Woods Kieron Moore Liam Bayne Creator(s) Catherine Moulton Seasons 1 Powered by Expand Collapse

Code of Silence is available to stream on BritBox. Check out the trailer: