It’s Rose Ayling-Ellis’s world at the moment – and we just live in it, which is proving to be a very nice thing for us all. In the three years since she left EastEnders she has: won a Stage Debut award and was nominated for an Olivier for her performance as Celia in @sohoplace’s As You Like It; taken part in two documentaries about deafness (she has been so since birth); starred in the excellent BBC thriller Reunion; was the central character in the first decent episode of Doctor Who there’s been in living memory; and is now the lead in the fine and fun ITV thriller Code of Silence. (She is also due to star in a forthcoming adaptation of Will Dean’s Dark Pines novel, and is developing her own comedy-drama about deaf women dating in London. No, I don’t know how she finds the time either.)
But to Code of Silence. Ayling-Ellis plays Alison, an employee in a police canteen who becomes increasingly involved with an investigation into a violent criminal gang, whose members only meet outdoors in unbuggable locations. Plainclothes officers surveil them with hidden cameras, but back at the station all the official lip readers are busy on other jobs and unavailable to interpret footage of them talking. Enter Alison.
