Just because Season 5 of the hit Apple TV spy drama “Slow Horses” wrapped up earlier this week, that doesn’t mean there’s not still more content from the streamer for viewers to enjoy right now that has the same grubby Slough House feel. In fact, the show in question happens to be sitting right next to “Slow Horses” on Apple TV’s Top 10 TV Shows list.
Apple TV’s new crime thriller “Down Cemetery Road” — in which an ordinary woman, played by Ruth Wilson, gets caught up in the disappearance of a child and a cold-case murder — debuted earlier this week, arriving just in time to satisfy viewers who crave stories with things like dry British wit and broken people at the mercy of untrustworthy institutions. Better yet: It’s based on Mick Herron’s 2003 debut novel of the same name, the same Herron who would go on to make a name for himself as the modern-day John le Carré, thanks to his Slough House series of novels (his most recent, “Clown Town,” was published in September).
Down Cemetery Road enters the Apple TV Top 10
In Apple’s adaptation of Herron’s “Down Cemetery Road,” Emma Thompson stars as a private investigator named Zoë Boehm. She starts looking into a suburban house explosion that leaves a child missing and a neighbor searching for answers. The cast of the show, currently #3 on Apple TV, also includes Adeel Akhtar and Tom Riley, rounding out a world that feels defined by both tragedy as well as absurdity — a Herron narrative trademark, of sorts.
In fact, you don’t even have to look all that closely to see Herron here testing the voice that would later define Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb and his gang of misfit spies. “Down Cemetery Road” carries the same quick, cutting humor and distrust of authority that abound in Herron’s work. Almost everything and everyone here feels stained by compromise. Like Jackson Lamb, Thompson’s Boehm is a professional who’s long since stopped believing the system can be fixed; she just tries to thread her way through the mess in its wake.
The most fascinating thing here, if you ask me, is watching Herron’s narrative talent in its embryonic state — before MI5 and Cold War-era shadow warriors had entered the picture. Watch Apple’s new crime drama, if for no other reason than to enjoy a sort of rough draft of “Slow Horses,” Herron’s triumph that would come later.
