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Episode One Synopsis

A deaf girl witnesses a murder...

Eighteen-year-old Amelia (Genevieve Barr) breaks free from her over-protective parents (Gina McKee and Hugh Bonneville) when she goes to stay with her party-loving cousins (Harry Ferrier, Rebecca Oldfied and Tom Kane), homicide detective uncle Jim (Douglas Henshall), and vibrant aunt, Maggie (Dervla Kirwan).

Amelia has recently had a cochlear implant fitted and is undergoing intensive speech therapy to learn to hear for the first time. Joining in with the chaotic and lively household, Amelia volunteers to take the dog for a walk – and witnesses the audacious murder of a policewoman. Reluctantly, she is propelled into a loud and frightening world.

Jim takes on the homicide investigation, unaware that his niece is the key witness to the murder. Traumatised, Amelia wants to retreat back into her silent world but realises that her uncle what she has seen. Jim wants to protect her because she is his niece and vulnerable – but by doing so he will jeopardise his own position in the force and put his whole family at risk.

The Silence is about an ordinary family thrust into extraordinary circumstances. The teenagers' partying lifestyles and casual drug-taking collide with Jim's investigation, and all their lives are hurled into a cacophony of police corruption, betrayal, drugs and murder.

Episode Two Synopsis

Amelia identifies one of Jane Shilliday's killers – a detective on the drugs squad. DCI Peter MacKinnon, better known as Mac (Rod Hallett), heads up the successful drugs squad. Jim (Douglas Henshall) becomes increasingly suspicious that there is corruption on a large scale in the squad and that the murder of the policewoman, Jane Shilliday, who was romantically involved with drugs squad copper Rocky (Richie Campbell), is connected.

Jim's position on Shilliday's murder investigation becomes increasingly compromised as his own team on the murder squad close in on the very witness he is trying to protect: Amelia (Genevieve Barr).

Amelia offers to lipread surveillance DVDs for Jim. She lipreads a conversation between Rocky and a recently-murdered informant – revealing that the drugs squad are on the take.

With the evidence stacking up against the drugs squad, it is only a matter of time before Jim's colleagues find out who the unknown key witness to the murder is.