On paper, Down Cemetery Road (Apple TV+, from today) should be irresistible. Adapted from a novel by Slow Horses author Mick Herron, it unites Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson as sleuthing strangers required to join forces when a bloody conspiracy wreaks havoc in modern Oxford. But it never quite comes together. Worse yet, it wastes Thompson by having her play a hugely dislikable eccentric detective with the trying-too-hard name of Zoë Boehm.
Boehm does not play well with others. She is snappy and sarcastic and cheerfully cheats on her husband while rubbing his face in her infidelities. These are qualities that are difficult to warm to, even by the standards of the modern TV anti-hero. The other problem is that she is barely in the first episode. The focus is instead on Wilson’s Sarah Trafford, an art restorer married to the hapless Mark (Tom Riley), a wimpy finance bro desperate to ascend the greasy pole.
His big chance arrives when the local hedge-fund bigwig Gerard (Tom Goodman-Hill) agrees to have Mark and Sarah host dinner. Gerard is, of course, a boor and snob. He and Sarah are set for a blazing row about social justice when their neighbourhood is struck by an explosion that the authorities immediately blame on a gas leak.
But it is actually a hit job gone awry by British intelligence – as we learn when the action cuts to a shadowy spy agency and hapless agent Hamzar (Adeel Akhtar), whose mission in the sleepy university town has spiralled out of control. Sarah, being the heroine, senses something amiss when a young victim of the blast is written out of existence, with local police and doctors conspiring to pretend she never was at the scene of the tragedy.
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There is no plausible reason why Sarah should be so obsessively invested in the child’s disappearance. She comes across as a snoopy neighbour whose nosiness verges on the pathological. There are also issues with the aggressively droll, which pivots from death and destruction one moment to trying-too-hard dark humour the next.
That is likewise a problem with Slow Horses – a deeply annoying affair, despite all the plaudits flung at it and at Gary Oldman’s lead performance as a slobbish secret agent. As the bonkers Boehm, Thompson is required in Down Cemetery Road to give a very Oldman-esque turn. Her character is eccentric to the point of being a straight-up weirdo, yet the show takes it for granted that we’re on her side from the start and will be charmed by her poor manners and her seething disdain for her husband Joe (Adam Godley).
As with many British TV shows largely aimed at an American audience, it also suffers from an excess of banter. Just as Americans will insist Ireland is full of sweary peasants – played invariably by Irish actors in it for the pay cheque and potential Oscar awards nomination – so they like to believe that the UK is populated by sarcastic underdogs who can’t utter more than four words without bunging in some black humour. That is the secret sauce that sustains Slow Horses – but Down Cemetery Road cranks it up further yet and will trigger in many viewers an allergy to wisecracking Brits.
Thompson, to her credit, does her best to invest this cold, weird fish with some personality. Wilson, meanwhile, plays the same character she always has – looking both perpetually shocked and a bit detached at the same time. The two stars give off sparks when they’re together on screen – they’re too talented not to. But the script never takes advantage of the illustrious cast and, for that reason, Down Cemetery Road feels dead on arrival.
