Star is born with dazzling turn by Rose Ayling-Ellis
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Rose Ayling-Ellis is having a moment. Make that more than a moment. Since winning Strictly she hasn't put a foot wrong, and this week finds herself on the cover of Radio Times, the acting equivalent of fronting Vogue.
All this as she plays her first lead role in the crime thriller Code of Silence. It's an above-par piece, but by far the best thing about it is Ayling-Ellis as a deaf canteen worker who becomes a lip reader on a robbery investigation. Across six parts, viewers get to enjoy a satisfyingly twisty yarn from writer Catherine Moulton (Baptiste, Hijack) and watch a star of the small screen being formed.
Ayling-Ellis plays Alison Brooks, a young woman washing pots and scrubbing ovens in a local branch of His Majesty's constabulary in Canterbury, Kent. Called upstairs to CID one day, she is told 'all our lip readers are busy on other jobs' and would she mind helping out?
There is no time to stop and ponder whether that would happen because too much else is going on. Like Alison, the viewer is dropped into the middle of a fast-moving investigation and must crack on regardless.
Alison is thrilled by the praise for her efforts. In another life, this young woman might be rising through the CID ranks herself instead of being paid minimum wage to help them out now and then. Not that Moulton, herself hearing-impaired, is so crass as to point this out. Instead, the look on Alison's face says it all. Used to feeling invisible and excluded by her disability, she is now 'seen' and accepted. She could get used to this. 'I don't want to be hearing,' she says. 'I just want them to be a bit deaf.'
The same lightness of touch is seen in the way Code of Silence deals with lip-reading. As Alison watches, words and parts of words float onto the screen before swimming into focus. Context is everything and effort is required.
Back to the robbery, and no sooner has the nice woman detective (Charlotte Ritchie from Ghosts) warned Alison not to become too involved than she is crossing red lines left, right and centre. Again, Moulton is on the case, steering the viewer away from asking too many questions by throwing them another sub-plot or semi-plausible explanation.
A clever script and a strong cast aside, it is up to Ayling-Ellis to do most of the heavy lifting on the acting front. If we don't believe in her character, the house of cards starts to wobble.
What a performance she turns in. What a face. Delicately drawn yet highly expressive, it is made for the small screen. Put her in any scene and the eye is naturally drawn to her, a definition of star quality if ever there was one.
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