From Acorn TV:
Deaf teenager Amelia (Genevieve Barr, Liar) wants to adjust to the hearing world and escape her overprotective parents (Hugh Bonneville & Gina McKee). But when she witnesses a murder, it jeopardizes the career of her homicide-detective uncle (Douglas Henshall, Shetland) and endangers her whole family. “A stunningly well-made thriller…taut, suspenseful and earth-shatteringly well written” –Express.
From Acorn TV you can stream the 4 episodes of this Irish thriller. Each episode is about an hour.
Talk about tense! In Shetland Douglas Henshall’s character DI Jimmy Perez is calm, thoughtful, persistent, and competent. In “The Silence” his detective character Jim (characters as found in IMDB have no last names) is persistent, competent, not corrupt, however anything but calm. And no wonder! His deaf niece Amelia witnesses one corrupt cop murder another cop by running her down with an automobile. Jim is faced with protecting her while fighting to convince his fellow officers that there are clever, bent cops in the precinct who murder and are drug dealers. Moreover, because of his exasperated demeanor those bent cops can easily persuade Jim’s colleagues that Jim has mental problems, which reminds us of Trump’s method of discrediting anyone who disagrees with him.
You will probably recognize some of the other actors such as:
- Gina McKee plays Anne, Amelia’s mother. She played Irene Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga.
- Hugh Bonneville plays Chris, Amelia’s father. He plays Robert Crawley in Downton Abbey.
From IMDB we learn some personal facts about the deaf actress Genevieve Barr: Genevieve Barr was born deaf and normally uses hearing aids. For her role as Amelia, who has just had a cochlear implant fitted, she was required to remove her hearing aids. She also had to learn sign language which she had never done before because she had always relied on her hearing aids supplemented by lip reading.
You might be astounded, disappointed, angry, puzzled, or all of the above after the last (fourth) episode finishes. But that is a notable feature of British plots: why waste time on the details of an expected warm-feeling finale? You can figure out for yourself what will happen next. However, if it makes you feel any better, rest assured there are many “outraged” reviews. Here is just one such review from IMDB: