Emma Thompson’s high-stakes mystery thriller is gripping if you ignore one thing

Have you ever been to a dinner party so bad you wouldn’t have minded some catastrophe interrupting it? That is (sort of) the premise of Down Cemetery Road.

When a gas main explodes in a sleepy Oxford suburb, arts restorer Sarah Tucker (a dogged Ruth Wilson, with an enviable knitwear collection) is in her nearby home, flailing at the dinner table amid a pompous lecture from her husband’s colleague.

They rush outside to find emergency services running from the wreckage to take a shaken child to the hospital and the body of her mother to the morgue. Yet, when Good Samaritan Sarah tries to deliver a homemade card and is stonewalled by the hospital staff, she starts to suspect there’s a conspiracy afoot.

This might seem like a rash conclusion, but she’s spot on.

Soon Sarah enlists the help of Oxford Investigations. They’ve put as much effort into the name as they have their office space. The employee count at private investigation HQ can be totalled on two fingers: Zoe Boehm, played by a prickly in hair and nature Emma Thompson, and her wimpy husband Joe, played by Adam Godley.

Zoe and her distressed leather jacket are only slightly less out of their depth than Sarah, who finds she can no longer rely on virtually everyone in her life, including her husband (a finance bro who seems to have gone astray in between takes on Industry). 

As the eight-part thriller unspools, we loop in some shadowy Ministry of Defence figures, who are evidently behind the whole thing. These repetitive scenes play out like a jarring The Thick of It pastiche where a headmaster is chastising a pupil.

Shot in a cramped government office, the civil servant in trouble is paper-pushing Hamza (Adeel Akhtar), having done a slapdash job covering up the truth of this explosion and losing a rogue agent in the field. His irate employer is C (Darren Boyd), with a potty mouth that aims for Malcolm Tucker but falls short.

I might have said the show would be better without the baddies, but Fehinti Balogun’s dead-eyed operative Amos is an unflappable and creepy presence you would not want to meet IRL.

The series has been adapted by Slow Horses writers’ room alum, Morwenna Banks (who is also, epic fun fact, the voice of Peppa forebear Mummy Pig) and gives Thompson in particular a barbed role you won’t tire of seeing. The rationale for why Sarah gets mixed up in all this never really rings true, but Wilson is as good as ever so you can’t begrudge it.

Now for the elephant in the room. Down Cemetery Road is based on a series of books by Mick Herron – also known as the penman of the Slow Horses novels. You might, like me, know that going in (if you’re reading this, you definitely will). 

Their similarities are all over the shop. The abrasive, always-right Zoe is Jackson Lamb, both of whom partake in the odd sink shower. Sarah, having bitten off more than she can chew, is River Cartwright. The MoD is the Park, but with writing that isn’t quite as good.

Perhaps it’s down to Herron having written the Zoe Boehm series of books – there are four in total, so don’t expect this to be the last we see of spiky-haired Thompson – before the Slough House series.

The teething problems could be a writer who was not yet at the height of his powers, but we’ve already seen the product of when he is. Slow Horses’ brilliance surpasses Down Cemetery Road, which is also the poorer for not having quite as snappy a title.

It’s an unfair comparison, really. Slow Horses is one of the best TV shows on the air right now and could very well be one of the greatest ever when it’s in our rearview mirror.

Don’t let any of this deter you from tuning in, because if you miss Slough House after this week’s finale, this is the closest thing you’ll find to slot into that gap.

The first two episodes of Down Cemetery Road are available to stream from October 29 on Apple TV.

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