Code of Silence, on BritBox

When baseball players conference on the pitcher’s mound, they often hold up their gloves to foil lip-readers. They play cricket in the UK. That is a lucky break for DI James Marsh’s team, because their lip-reader helps clue them into a gang’s larcenous plans. Unfortunately, Alison Woods gets a little too enthusiastic and inadvertently involves herself with one of the investigation’s targets in creator Catherine Moulton’s six-part Code of Silence, which premieres today on BritBox.

Technically, Woods is a police employee, but she merely labors in the cafeteria at the Canterbury station. She is smart, but only works service jobs, because she is deaf and everyone underestimates her. However, when DI Marsh arranges surveillance on Helen Redman (code-named “Cruella”) and her crew, they find themselves without a department-certified lip-reader, so they call up Woods.

She does well, helping Marsh’s team identify the newcomer, Liam Barlow (code-named “Hoodie”), who has been recruited to handle the technical aspects of the heist. After another surveillance gig, the temptations of curiosity and recognition get the better of her, so Woods applies for a bar-tending job at the pub owned by the gang’s enforcer, Braden Moore (a.k.a. “Hulk”). It is there that Woods meets the lonely Barlow, who obviously takes a shine to her and vice versa, even though Woods is trying to facilitate his arrest and conviction.

Barlow emerges as a highly compelling character, whom Kieron Moore vividly brings to life with his subtle but intense performance. However, his will-they-or-won’t-they melodrama with Woods gets a bit tiresome. There is no denying the honesty of deaf thesp Rose Ayling-Ellis’s portrayal of Woods, but some of her rash courtship of danger frequently stretches believability.

The primary focus falls on Woods and Barlow, but the supporting players on both sides of the law are rock-solid. Charlotte Ritchie and especially Andrew Buchan steadily flesh-out DS Ashleigh Francis and DI Marsh. Likewise, Joe Absolom projects menace and cunning as the erratic Moore.

Unfortunately, the regular detours exploring Woods personal life often feel like dead wood. For instance, her ex-boyfriend Eithan, a local government council bureaucrat, should have had five minutes of screen-time, at most. Instead, he is a major secondary character. Yet, every time he appears, the momentum screeches to a halt.

Still, the relationship between Woods and Barlow produces a lot of suspenseful intrigue, as well as genuine sympathy for both parties. Arguably, Code of Silence is a good example of why it is better to compress rather than stretch out series. Frankly, Moulton started with a winning concept and buttressed it with some smart ideas, but it probably would have worked better as a two-hour feature film than as a six-part series.

Yes, tighter would have been better, but Code of Silence definitely deserves credit for showing the benefits of police surveillance, which certainly makes it an outlier amongst recent film and TV releases. It also handles the deaf experience with sensitivity, without excessive virtue signaling. Recommended on balance for fans of British police serials, Code of Silence starts streaming today (7/24) on BritBox.