Down Cemetery Road Review

As a big fan of AppleTV+’s Slow Horses, I was excited to learn that the streaming service was planning on adapting another Mick Herron book series. Unfortunately, despite two strong central performances from Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, Down Cemetery Road can’t quite live up to the high bar set by its Herron predecessor. It’s a matter of a convoluted central mystery and committing the cardinal sin of splitting up the two strongest characters for far too long that takes what should have been a compelling thriller and turns it into a bit of a dud.

So, just what is the story we’re chasing in this tale? When an explosion destroys a house down the street – killing all its inhabitants save one young girl – Sarah Tucker (Wilson, in a harried and interesting performance) attempts to get a card from a friend’s child to the young girl in hospital. Only, no one seems to know who this girl is – not the hospital staff, not the local police. And those newspaper stories that showed her being carried out of the wreckage? Those photos are suddenly scrubbed of the girl’s existence online. Fearing something sinister – and when no one else in her personal life believes her – Sarah asks a local PI, Joe Silverman (Adam Godley) to look into the case. When the heat gets turned up even more, Silverman’s estranged wife, Zoe Boehm (Thompson, sardonic and an utter delight) steps up to the plate to try and dig into just why so many highly powered people want to make this girl disappear.

Now, that sounds like a heck of a thriller, right? Shadowy government individuals trying to keep a little girl under wraps as a means to hide some sort of conspiracy that could impact the British government. All the while, a stressed out Sarah and a cool as a cucumber Zoe try to find the little girl and unmask the government plot. It sounds great on paper. And, by all accounts, it made for a great novel. But the execution here makes this adaptation fall flat – largely because of how the series is structured.

Without giving too much of the game away, the story is split, for the majority of the series, into four quadrants. There’s Zoe’s investigation, which she undertakes for multiple episodes largely on her own. There’s Sarah attempting to hide from a rogue villain who is out to snuff out anyone who might know the truth behind everything that is going down (which does put her in the orbit of Nathan Stewart-Jarrett’s Downey, another in a string of morally grey men with a heart of gold in Stewart-Jarrett’s career). There’s the machinations of the British government officials. And there’s what’s happening with the missing girl – where she is moved to, who she’s interacting with. One of these pieces – Zoe’s investigation – is always interesting. One is occasionally interesting – that would be the Sarah portion. And the other two? Often overly confusing and too complicated to be of much interest.

At the risk of comparing this very different show to Slow Horses*, the major problem with Down Cemetery Road is that the series never takes the time to flesh out its supporting characters. We get plenty of time with Sarah and Zoe, our co-leads. We get to understand who they are, what makes them want to embark on this investigation, why all of this is important to them. And we get the chance to watch their personal relationship – often prickly, but always respectful – grow once the series lets them spend multiple episodes working together. It also doesn’t hurt that Thompson and Wilson have excellent chemistry and an easy rapport with one another. Out of the rest of our cast, only Downey is really given much characterization and even that comes in fits and starts. Everyone else? Well, by the time I got to the end of the series, I didn’t even know most of their names.

*Slow Horses is a story built on the actions of a team. And yes, in season one, most of the supporting characters weren’t nearly as fleshed out has they have become four years into the series. It’s my understanding that the Zoe Boehm novels are more or less about Sarah and Zoe working together to solve cases. So, supporting characters likely mean a bit less in that world. Still, you need to create compelling characters to surround our leading ladies, or else the audience won’t care what happens to them. And we certainly won’t get worried about the potential fate of our ladies when they face the bad guys – a lack of stakes can kill a thriller faster than a bullet.

Now, had the series kept Sarah and Zoe together for the long haul, the show would have at least been able to rely on the chemistry between Thompson and Wilson to push past some of the clunkier bits of plot and exposition. As it stands, this isn’t a bad show by any stretch. But it’s not a great show, despite having two great actors at its center. This series could have worked much better than it does. If you’re looking for an average thriller to waste some time on, Down Cemetery Road is worth a look. But there’s better fare out there – including the most recent season of Slow Horses.

Down Cemetery Road premieres on October 29. All eight episodes were provided for review.