Bafta-winning crime thriller show from Kin director now on streaming

JOE spoke to Irish director Diarmuid Goggins (Close to Home, Kin) about the show and its Bafta win for Best Drama Series last month.

After the show's prestigious award win, JOE invited its Irish director, Diarmuid Goggins, into our studio for a wide-ranging conversation about the crime thriller, the Bafta victory, and his career.

Streaming on the Virgin Media Player after being released on ITV in the UK last year, Code of Silence follows Alison Woods (Bafta nominee Rose Ayling-Ellis, Reunion), a deaf young woman who works as a cleaner and dishwasher in a police canteen, a job she hates.

One day, she is approached by DS Ashleigh Francis (Charlotte Richie, Legends), who works upstairs. Ashleigh and her superior DI James Marsh (Andrew Buchan, Broadchurch) have been surveilling a criminal gang, whom they suspect of planning a heist.

Watch the trailer for Code of Silence here:

The police's footage of the gang has no sound, which leads them to call in Alison to serve as an emergency lip reader.

Thanks to the canteen worker's lip-reading skills, Ashleigh and James make several breakthroughs in the case.

Emboldened by this success and desperate to advance in her career, Alison begins her own investigation into the gang, breaking the rules set out to her by the police.

In the process, she winds up forming a romantic connection with Liam (Kieron Moore, Boots), one of Ashleigh and James' main suspects for the impending heist.

Diarmuid Goggins on Code of Silence

When Goggins talks about what attracted him to Code of Silence, he mentions everything we love about the six-part series - its blend of genres, its lovable and unique protagonist, and its social commentary.

He explains: "When I came to the show, I read the script. A lot of what I loved about it was… it had so much going on. It had thriller elements. It had romance elements. It had half a heist element. And it had something to say about the world.

"What it has to say about the world is to look at the underrepresented, to look at disability, and in this instance, to look at the deaf community, and to look at some of the problems that the deaf community faces.

Rose Ayling-Ellis in Code of Silence

"So, what we are trying to do is wrap up a thriller, a romance, a heist movie, and say something about the world.

"[It's an] entertaining piece that doesn't preach about the world, but at the same time sets out the difficulties and problems that the deaf community faces.

"I love the characters. I found Rose as an actor and as a character to be an incredible human being. She's very endearing, very likeable.

"That's half the battle in casting. If you have a likeable character, your show is off to a winning start, and she is immensely likeable. I always say about Rose Ayling-Ellis that she's impossible to hate, and she is."

Code of Silence's incredible direction

As for Goggins' direction on Code of Silence, the goal was to try to "place the audience in the world" of Alison. One of the main ways the series accomplishes this is through its inventive use of subtitles.

"One of the things I love about my job more than anything is trying to present a world visually where an audience feels a little bit like on a roller coaster ride… That they're involved, that they're in the world, and they're soaked up in the world," he tells JOE.

"One of the things that [creator] Catherine Moulton had written into the script was this very clever way of deciphering lip reading.

"So, Catherine is hard of hearing. She lip-reads, and the way that she lip-reads is that she forms part of the word. So, if it was 'I went down the road', she gets 'ent own oad', and then she fills in the blanks by going 'ent own oad' must be 'I went down the road'.

"And so she wrote these messages basically into the script, and it was a case for us of just trying to visualise them, to kind of go: 'How do we visualise lip reading? How do we visualise text?'

"I mean, in the modern world we've lots of phones. Inserts of phones, inserts of texts, they're not very exciting visually. So, we tried to find ways to do that, and that was a process of exploration where we just tried many different things.

"We tried a typewriter type text. We tried a disappearing text. We tried an evolving text. It was basically a process of trial and error where we tried a load of different things on the screen to see which one was the most interesting. What we quickly found out was that we wanted the audience to be involved.

"Every time we watched lip reading, we found ourselves trying to decipher what was being said. So, the challenge then was for us to go: 'How do we create a show where the nine million people that are going to watch this on ITV sit there trying to decipher what's being said,' and that's how we approached it.

"So, we approached a graphical company that put [forward] lots of ideas for us about the font size, the font colour. There's lots of technical things that had to go into it. But really, it was about a game. How do we [enable] the audience to get involved in this game?

"And in two ways, they were involved. They felt connected to the show. But I think it also brings you closer to the characters and also [makes you understand] that lip-reading is really challenging. It's really tiring because you have to use a lot of brain power, but it's also a very difficult thing to try to do."

Bafta success

We then asked Goggins if he realised how big a hit Code of Silence was going to be. On top of its Bafta win, ITV said that the show was "the most-watched drama across all platforms and channels in Q2 of 2025".

The series has also already been reviewed for a season two.

Speaking about Code of Silence's acclaim and high viewership, Goggins says: "Every time you start a show, I think you deep down dream that it's going to be a success and that people are going to rave about it and it's going to win all the awards.

"The reality is, most times you do it, it doesn't. So, what you focus on is trying to make the best show and the most entertaining show.

"For me, I just try and put myself in the audience's perspective, and what it is I would like to see and what it is that entertains me. Then you just go off on a journey where you hope that people like it, and people want to watch it.

"What you do is you surround yourself with great people. You surround yourself with the best crew, and you surround yourself with the best cast.

Charlotte Richie in Code of Silence

"Each of the actors brings something to it. I think that's a huge part. So much of great television, great cinema is about great characters.

"We want to fall in love with characters. We want to hate characters. We want to go on a journey with characters. If you have that at the core central premise, you're onto something good. We knew we had that. So, it was half the battle."

Goggins also believes that timing played a huge part in Code of Silence's success, with the series tapping into a perhaps unconscious desire from audiences.

On this, he tells JOE: "I think with a lot that's going on in the modern world politically and with the kind of upheaval, people want series that show love and show caring and show connection and show that if we're a little bit understanding and a little bit giving, the world can be a better place.

"Some of the message of the show is about that. It's about being tolerant and standing back and listening to what people need, [and how that] can be hugely helpful."

Kieron Moore and Rose Ayling-Ellis in Code of Silence

Code of Silence's nomination for Best Drama Series at the TV Baftas came at a time when Goggins needed a boost.

As the director explains: "I'm in the middle of shooting a new series for Channel 4 [Close to Home]. We were up in Belfast shooting, and it was the most miserable week of weather I've ever experienced. It was raining. It was sleeting. It was snowing.

I was really questioning my life decisions in wanting to be a director, standing in the rain and getting soaked, when my phone started hopping. [Code of Silence] had been nominated for a Bafta.

"To get a nomination was incredible, and to be honest, we were up against this really stiff competition."

Also nominated in the Best Drama Series at the TV Baftas were A Thousand Blows, Blue Lights, and This City is Ours.

Continuing, Goggins says: "So, I really wanted to just enjoy the Baftas. My whole thing was: 'Go, enjoy it, soak up the moment' and not to get caught up in the 'whole if we win, if we lose' thing.

"That's what I did. I went and enjoyed it, saw some celebs, tried to walk the red carpet, be the cool guy - the things that you try to do, but I failed miserably at," he jokes.

"Then they call out your name, and it's just completely surreal. I started out making short films when I was a kid. I wanted to be a director since I was 12.

"You dream about winning an Oscar, and then you dream about winning a Bafta. To finally find yourself on the stage holding a Bafta, going: 'I've won a Bafta', is a very, very surreal thing.

"Every morning, I look at the award, and I kind of go: 'I think I'm going to retire because I can't get better than this.' It is a huge thing.

"You always hope you will win one. The reality is that to win one is such a big achievement that it may never happen.

"So, it's happened now, and it's a very, very special thing."

Post-Bafta win

In the weeks since the Bafta win, Goggins has already set himself his next career goals.

"Yes, there's been a couple of conversations about potential jobs. I never sit on my laurels. Part of, I think, my success has been that I'm a very driven human being. I don't stop. I don't wallow in it," the director explains.

"I'm like: 'I've already moved on from the Bafta,' you know? I love it. I enjoyed it, but I'm going: 'What's next?'

"I had two dreams as a kid, really, and one was to win a Bafta and the other was to win an Oscar.

"So, I feel the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, whatever, of my life will be actually trying to go: 'Can I make a feature film? Do I get into feature films, and can I be back in the JOE offices in X amount of time, of years, being interviewed by you guys again with an Oscar?' Wouldn't that be sweet?"

Code of Silence season one is streaming in its entirety on the Virgin Media Player now.