'Code of Silence' Keeps July Release on BritBox Quiet

When people look back at the 2020s, chances are they will consider the moment CODA won the Oscar for Apple TV+ as the watershed moment for deaf representation. (The title CODA is taken from the deaf community acronym for "[Hearing] Children of Deaf Adults.") However, Deaf representation has been slowly building on TV for the better part of a decade. All Creatures Great & Small's Rachel Shenton, for example, starred in The Silent Child, based on her own experiences as a child of a deaf parent; James Caverly made headlines for his POV episode of Only Murders in the Building, and Alaqua Cox starred as Maya Lopez in the Disney+ series, Echo.

Rose Ayling-Ellis (Ludwig) is one of the best-known deaf actors in the U.K., due to her years-long run on the popular soap EastEnders in the early 2020s, punctuated by her competing on (and winning) Strictly Come Dancing in the show's 2021 edition. (She was the first-ever deaf contestant on the series.) At the age of 30, she's already been awarded an MBE by the Crown, putting her on track to reach Damehood in the next decade.

And yet, it's still a surprise to see ITV give a deaf actor the lead role in a run-of-the-mill police procedural. It's a natural progression, especially in light of the 21st-century tendency to give Sherlock-style detectives official (or semi-official) diagnoses as neurodivergent or on the autism spectrum. Having a deaf investigator "who reads lips to solve the crime" as the hook fits the cozy-crime-style mystery so well that it's amazing that no one ever thought to try it before.