Produced on a budget of £1 million, it stars Hugh Bonneville as Wakefield and Juliet Stevenson as Christine Shields, a fictional mother who discovers the possible MMR-autism link when her son is diagnosed as autistic.
[8] The Times science writer Anjana Ahuja believed there were reasons to praise the drama as it contained a "powerful portrayal of autism, parental frustration and marital strains", despite its serious flaws.
[9] Otherwise the film was received negatively, with critics arguing that it portrayed the purported MMR-autism link in a mistakenly sympathetic light as scientific evidence supporting the connection was lacking.
[10] Of the supposed plot presumed to originate with the drug companies as a means to discredit Wakefield, Ben Goldacre wrote in The Guardian of its utter implausibility as the patent on the MMR vaccine had lapsed, it was now generic and no longer highly profitable.
[2] Goldacre wrote that while the film was "moving and convincing" as a drama, it was factually inaccurate: "The only things that the writers of Hear the Silence get wrong, to be fair, are the science and the story.
"[2] In addition, David Aaronovitch wrote that while the film begins by saying that it is a "dramatised account of the work of Dr Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital in the late 1990s", the statement is not accurate.