‘Down Cemetery Road’ Review: Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson in a Clever, Offbeat Detective Story (Apple TV)

Apple TV seems to have found a reliable source of inspiration in the work of Mick Herron. The novelist is the author of the Slow Horses saga, now heading into its fifth season and already committed to several more — as many as the British author has written, and possibly still plans to write. While digging through his back catalogue, the producers quickly discovered another multi-book series: four novels centred on Zoë Boehm, a private detective based in Oxford. The first of those four — and in fact Herron’s debut novel — was Down Cemetery Road, published in 2003. And that’s the story now coming to Apple TV, hoping to follow in the successful footsteps of the Slough House crew.

If Slow Horses features Gary Oldman in a brilliantly unconventional role, here that same responsibility falls to Emma Thompson, who leads the cast in this first adaptation. Her part may not be as flamboyant as Oldman’s filthy, foul-mouthed Jackson Lamb, but Zoë Boehm is another wonderfully eccentric and unpredictable creation — sharp, cunning, a little deceitful and always several moves ahead of everyone else. Like Lamb, she’s an unlikely antihero: someone you might underestimate at first glance, but who turns out to be far sharper than anyone around her.

The two sagas share another key feature: tone. Both blend serious, often dark material with a mischievous, irreverent sense of humour — sometimes crass or blunt, but usually very effective. In both, something deadly serious may be unfolding while the characters say or do something wildly inappropriate, almost absurd. It’s a tricky balance, and while it generally works, in Down Cemetery Road it occasionally feels a bit forced, as if the series were determined to mimic Herron’s trademark quirkiness even when some scenes don’t quite call for it.

The plot begins in deceptively simple fashion before spiralling into the unexpected — another Herron signature. It all starts rather casually: Sarah Tucker (Ruth Wilson) works at a museum, and her husband, a bank employee, invites a wealthy potential client to dinner. Two of Sarah’s friends join them — a somewhat bohemian couple who have little in common with the honoured guest and his glamorous ex-model partner. The evening is already awkward when everything is suddenly interrupted by a massive explosion: a nearby house goes up in flames, leaving one woman dead and a young girl missing.

Childless and convinced she knows the missing girl, Sarah becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her. But the details don’t add up — doctored photos, blatant lies, people following her. With no real connection to the case — and perhaps to distract herself from a strained marriage and her own unfulfilled maternal instincts — she hires a private investigator, one Joe Silvermann (Adam Godley, in a role that clearly anticipates some traits later seen in Jackson Lamb). And Joe is married to Zoë.

Unsure of his client’s motives but in need of money, Silvermann starts digging — and soon finds himself in dangerous territory. Things turn violent, and his wife, also a detective but working independently, is forced to step in and take over. She quickly realises there’s much more to this case than meets the eye. The audience knows this too — we see high-ranking military and government officials whispering about the situation — but the full picture remains obscure. What’s clear is that the two women are walking into something far darker, likely tied to military secrets.

The series doesn’t stray far from the mould of a classic British detective drama. But it handles its increasingly tangled web with elegance, sharp dialogue and strong performances. Though Thompson is the marquee name, it’s Wilson who carries the true emotional weight of the story: a lonely, somewhat restless woman drawn into a mystery partly out of curiosity, partly to fill an emotional void, and soon caught up in something that may be an international conspiracy. Despite the obvious danger, she refuses to back down.

Zoë, for her part, is also in over her head. Her previous work as a private eye — we never see it, but we can guess — seems to have involved cheating spouses and small-time deceptions rather than anything resembling national security. Creator Morwenna Banks — not coincidentally a writer on Slow Horses — and her creative team manage to make us believe that these two women, neither of them seemingly cut out for this world of espionage and violence, can still find a way through it. That’s the secret to this very good British series: it understands that clever humour can make logic secondary, at least in stories like these.

Not every supporting character is up to the same level — a few fall back on easy jokes, something Slow Horses occasionally suffers from too — but the leads are superb. With that, and a story full of strange twists and tense surprises, Down Cemetery Road emerges as a witty, engaging thriller — and, one hopes, just the first of several seasons to come.