AustLit

'Eighteen-year-old Amelia Edwards (introducing Genevieve Barr) has recently been fitted with a cochlear implant, enabling her to hear, but she struggles to accept that she has a place in the hearing world.

'Breaking free from her over-protective parents (Gina McKee and Hugh Bonneville), she goes to stay with her party-loving cousins, homicide detective uncle, Jim (Douglas Henshall) and vibrant aunt, Maggie (Dervla Kirwan).

'But when Amelia witnesses the audacious murder of a policewoman, she is reluctantly propelled further into a loud and frightening world.

'Jim is assigned the case, and when Amelia identifies a police officer on the drugs squad as one of the killers, he urgently needs to protect his niece. If his colleagues find out what she has witnessed, she will be in extreme danger from the very people with whom he works. By keeping her a secret however, 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.'

Source: ABC website (http://www.abc.net.au/) (Sighted: 23/11/2010)