{"id":104174,"date":"2025-10-29T13:03:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T13:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/104174\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T13:03:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T13:03:07","slug":"emma-thompson-shines-in-apple-tv-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/104174\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Thompson Shines in Apple TV Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor a series about misfit intelligence operatives doggedly refusing to live up to even the lowest level of their potential, Apple TV\u2019s Slow Horses<\/a> is remarkably self-actualized.<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery year, come rain or shine or strike or global cataclysm, Slow Horses<\/a> delivers a new season. Each season thus far has been six episodes, with those episodes usually averaging 45 minutes, durations that have yet to feel too long or too short. Seasons have dealt with weighty, headline-ripping topics and they\u2019ve killed off several beloved characters, but Will Smith and his creative team have always known the precise quantity of humor necessary to protect Slow Horses from ever being either ponderous or frivolous.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDown Cemetery Road\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tUnpolished but superbly acted.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAirdate: Wednesday, October 29 (Apple TV)
Cast: Emma Thompson, Ruth Wilson, Fehinti Balogun, Adeel Akhtar, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Darren Boyd
Creator: Morwenna Banks\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tSlow Horses isn\u2019t always one of my favorite shows \u2014 the fungibility of its storylines, contributing to a sense of interchangeability of seasons, is both a feature and a bug \u2014 but if you asked me for a prototypical example of a TV show that knows precisely what it wants to be, Slow Horses would be my answer.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s a high (and specific) bar, and if Apple TV\u2019s Down Cemetery Road<\/a> wasn\u2019t based on a novel series from Slow Horses author Mick Herron<\/a>, wasn\u2019t adapted for TV by Slow Horses veteran Morwenna Banks and didn\u2019t, in spots, feel an awful lot like Slow Horses, I wouldn\u2019t make the comparison at all.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn its first season, Down Cemetery Road struggles with exactly the structural elements that seemed to come so naturally for Slow Horses. At eight episodes, most running over 50 minutes, Down Cemetery Road feels consistently padded and, especially in its first half, the momentum meanders in frustrating ways. The comedy, often quite broad, is occasionally jarringly incongruous, and the dramatic stakes of the season-long arc sometimes vanish entirely. There\u2019s probably a great six-episode season hiding within this opening run, but it isn\u2019t the version of the show that\u2019s finally airing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe flaws in Down Cemetery Road are not insignificant. But when you have a show built around the perfectly cast Emma Thompson<\/a>, instantly whetting appetites for adaptations of the next three Herron-penned Zo\u00eb Boehm mysteries, and a top-notch supporting ensemble led by Ruth Wilson<\/a> and breakout Fehinti Balogun<\/a>, the flaws become minor irritants and not dealbreakers. (Actually, Wilson isn\u2019t really part of the \u201csupporting\u201d cast. She\u2019s more like the star, even if the ongoing series of books continues following Thompson\u2019s Boehm and not Wilson\u2019s Sarah Tucker.)<\/p>\n

\n\tSarah is an Oxford-based art restorationist, living largely in the shadow of her dithering husband Mark (Tom Riley), a mid-level financier more interested in his professional mobility than paying attention to whether his wife is personally fulfilled.<\/p>\n

\n\tMark expects Sarah to play perfect wife and hostess for a potentially large client, the insufferable Gerard (Tom Goodman-Hill), and she dutifully orchestrates a small and awkward dinner party that\u2019s upended when a neighboring house explodes.<\/p>\n

\n\tAuthorities say \u201cgas leak,\u201d as they tend to. But Sarah is fixated on the disaster, in which two people were killed and a small girl was hospitalized and then vanishes. Self-conscious about her own childlessness, Sarah latches onto a single, earlier meeting with the girl and her now-deceased mother, and when she accidentally stumbles into a private investigator\u2019s office she sees the chance to get to the bottom of things.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe investigator whose name is on the door is Joe Silverman (Adam Godley, excellent in a brief role), but it instantly becomes clear that the brains of the operation is Joe\u2019s estranged wife, brash and brassy Zo\u00eb, with her spiky silver hair and snazzy leather jackets and no interest in the job\u2019s more social aspects.<\/p>\n

\n\tSarah is in way, way over her head. The explosion and the girl\u2019s disappearance are tied to an elaborate and confusing conspiracy that involves a shady, unnamed government agent (Darren Boyd); his bumbling underling (Adeel Akhtar\u2019s Hamza); a menacing assassin named Amos (Balogun); and a mysterious man (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, plagued by an underwritten role) who keeps popping up in Sarah\u2019s life with ambiguous intent.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat follows is an odd road trip across the U.K. with some folks trying to rescue the girl and unravel the conspiracy, and the bad guys trying to, um, keep those things from happening.<\/p>\n

\n\tA lot of what is unwieldy about Down Cemetery Road stems from the source novel, which predates the Slough House series and showcases a writer with an exceptional gift for dialogue and characterization but a more nascent sense of rudimentary storytelling.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn its surface, Down Cemetery Road fits into a meddling amateur gumshoe genre \u2014 think The Girl on the Train<\/a>, The Woman in the Window<\/a> and Sharp Objects<\/a> among others \u2014 in which a generally adrift main character (usually a woman, usually played by Amy Adams) attempts to solve a mystery that generally mirrors the aspects of their own lives that have left them without purpose.<\/p>\n

\n\tSarah has a useless husband and a useless job. The latter fact is odd, because in the book she has no job at all; the art restoration gig here is a job, but it\u2019s still useless. She also has a confusingly explained and depicted past trauma. The missing girl and the investigation give her an objective, or at least a clear-eyed sense of her strengths, perhaps for the first time.<\/p>\n

\n\tZo\u00eb, in contrast, knows her strengths, but she\u2019s been content to let her husband be the frontman for the agency. Now she has to come to terms with the state of her marriage and whether or not it\u2019s too late to have larger professional aspirations.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the conspiracy they\u2019ve plunged into is perfunctory, and the entire story is populated by red herrings, whole characters who exist to make you think they\u2019re important only to vanish very quickly, often never to be discussed again. It\u2019s two women trying to save a young woman and constantly being interfered with by mediocre men who are at best vestigial and at worst murderous.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike Slow Horses, in which everything is essential and nothing is filler, Down Cemetery Road spends four episodes introducing you to things that are entirely filler. One might easily reach the midpoint in the show unable to say what it\u2019s actually about, what anybody is trying to do and what difference it would make if Sarah and company fail in their mission. It\u2019s extremely lax, albeit frequently by design.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen the last few episodes become a series of set pieces in which our characters are split into three or four groups heading for common destinations, and solid suspense develops from the intercutting, taking the place of any real urgency. It helps that, as the conspiracy threatens to come undone, the man in charge (Boyd makes for a terrifying and catty government suit) stops turning to the floundering Hamza (Akhtar is funny but sometimes in a different way from the rest of the show) and unleashes Amos.<\/p>\n

\n\tBalogun, who stole scenes from Ewan McGregor in Paramount+\u2019s A Gentleman in Moscow<\/a>, has a smooth, searing confidence, mowing through extras and secondary characters with vicious efficiency. There are shades of a more stylish Terminator to Amos\u2019 ruthlessness, but Balogun never loses track of the mixture of human pain and professionalism that drives him. You can\u2019t take your eyes off of Balogun, and it will be interesting to see what casting directors do with him once the show puts him on more radars; he\u2019s a star, though what type of star remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also manages to steal the show out from under Thompson, but with a part this juicy, that\u2019s only an almost. Zo\u00eb has a lot in common with Gary Oldman\u2019s Jackson Lamb, only with a stronger sense of fashion and less flatulence. Zo\u00eb suffers neither fools nor even the generally competent, and there are few actors, if any, whom you\u2019d rather watch verbally eviscerate people for eight straight hours. But Thompson is every bit as good in the quieter moments, like when she recites the Philip Larkin stanza that gives the show its title.<\/p>\n

\n\tThompson is perfectly paired with Wilson, an actor who can go from disheveled wallflower to calculating plotter to deer-in-the-headlights comic fighter with a widening of the eye or twisting of the lips. It\u2019s no surprise that Down Cemetery Road is at its best when Thompson and Wilson share scenes, but it\u2019s odd that in expanding Zo\u00eb\u2019s profile for the series \u2014 the book is closer to 80 percent focused on Sarah \u2014 Banks and her writing team didn\u2019t give them more time together.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the odd choices that keep Down Cemetery Road from living up to its full potential, from telling a story that feels like it\u2019s building to something instead of stumbling around finding itself, even if that\u2019s what its main characters are doing. <\/p>\n

\n\tStill, the teaming of Thompson and Wilson, together and separately, was a choice as well \u2014 one that pays off in planting the seeds for further adventures (maybe or maybe not involving Wilson\u2019s character) that might come closer to that Slow Horses level of self-actualization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a series about misfit intelligence operatives doggedly refusing to live up to even the lowest level of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[68315,27255,146,68316,85,46,17153,68317,68318,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-104174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-down-cemetery-road","9":"tag-emma-thompson","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-fehinti-balogun","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-mick-herron","15":"tag-ruth-wilson","16":"tag-slow-horses","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}