‘Down Cemetery Road’ Review: Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson’s Apple Mystery Tells Two Discordant Stories

Based on "Slow Horses" author Mick Herron's first book, "Down Cemetery Road" follows an art conservationist (Wilson) who unravels a dangerous conspiracy while looking for a neighbor's missing child — with a little help from P.I. Zoë Boehm (Thompson).

In “Down Cemetery Road,” Ruth Wilson looks like a frog. It’s just in the first shot, when Wilson’s character, Sarah Tucker, examines a priceless piece of art, as art conservationists tend to do. But director Natalie Bailey introduces her co-lead head-on: The extended magnifying glasses hang a few inches in front of her face, and the audience peers back at her baby-blue eyes as they bulge disproportionately from her studious visage. What she’s working on is only revealed when Sarah raises her professional headgear: a yellowed painting of the crucifixion — specifically a section where a cherub floats near Jesus, his discolored halo only starting to shine through thanks to the expert’s restorative efforts.

At first, the scene feels like an engrossing, elevating prelude. Sarah is literally framed as someone who sees more than the average onlooker. She’s thoughtful, attentive, and protective (especially of overlooked women, a point of emphasis throughout the premiere). Plus, art conservationists aren’t exactly a common TV character, and seeing them work — meticulously, judiciously, and very, very slowly — doesn’t jibe with the modern proclivity to start a story at its most action-packed moment. Finally, here’s a TV show not only confident enough to put characters first, but confident its audience will see Sarah’s interests as their own.

Well, the first part holds true. After its distinguished opening, “Down Cemetery Road” never returns to Sarah’s work. The point of the scene, having watched all eight episodes of Morwenna Banks’ Apple TV mystery, isn’t just to establish Sarah, or tease her unique job, or shed light on a talent that may come in handy later on when she’s neck-deep in a governmental conspiracy about chemical weapons testing and kidnapped children. No, the point is that Sarah is weird. And, given how intently she considers her cherub, almost as if it represents something of deeper importance to her than the painting, that she may have unresolved issues with children. Never mind that she can spot a forgery with a passing glance or clocks out in a hallway of white marble statues. Ignore all that! It doesn’t matter! What matters is that this woman is a little off, especially when it comes to kids!

That sentiment may be a little too reductive to describe the boilerplate British crime-thriller as a whole, but it may still come to mind as Sarah leaves her old life behind to find a missing girl she’s never even met. For better or worse, Sarah is only in focus about one-third of the time. Another third is given to the Bad Men™️ behind the disaster that sparks her reawakening, and the final third is dedicated to Emma Thompson as P.I. Zoë Boehm, whose series of novels preceded author Mick Herron’s “Slough House” books — the same books that have now been adapted into five sterling seasons of a little show called “Slow Horses.”

“Down Cemetery Road” clearly wants to capture its literary successor’s TV magic; to pump out a solid, distinct season inspired by each solid, distinct book, while providing a reliable star vehicle for its surly senior Oscar winner (and, presumably, Wilson as well). But Zoë’s first adaptation stumbles out of the gate — in large part because this show isn’t really her show. It’s Sarah’s show, too, and the two distinct stories struggle to merge into one solid series.

Sarah’s arc is one of requisite change through radical self-acceptance. Her life, when we first meet her, is sad. Sure, she has a good job and lives in a nice house with a successful hubby (Tom Riley). But she’s surrounded by assholes. When Sarah tries to point out that a work credited to a famous painter is actually that of his wife, her boss ignores his underling’s informed insight and dismisses her with a withering look. Mark, her husband, is a banker who cares more about courting his rich client Gerard (Tom Goodman-Hill) than listening to his partner. He chastises Sarah for inviting their hippie neighbors over for a business dinner (which she cooks) and repeatedly sides with their priority guest, a conservative blowhard, even when he pushes them about personal decisions like not having kids.

“Any plans for kids?” Gerard asks. “We definitely want kids,” Mark says. “You’ll feel so different when it’s one of your own,” Wigwam adds, before Sarah has a chance to say anything at all. (Yes, Wigwam is the given name of their “alternative community” neighbor.) Her hesitancy alone is treated as a question in need of an answer rather than a valid response to an increasingly complex choice. By the time Gerard starts complaining about “social justice warriors” mucking up the adoption process and bragging about the gun collection that will save him from “the revolution,” Sarah is primed to explode.

So when an actual explosion sends glass and wine flying through the air in slow-motion, it initially seems like a daydream. Sarah gets so mad, she imagines the beginning of the end, and any second, the scene will restart: The wine will go back in its glasses, the floor-to-ceiling window will be fixed, and the conversation will turn to less incendiary topics. But none of that happens because the explosion is real. Less than a block away, a “gas leak” sets off a blast that leaves half a home in rubble and a little girl orphaned.

On her way home from work earlier, Sarah saw the young Dinah. She ran out in front of Sarah’s bicycle to stop her from running over a butterfly. That brief connection carries great meaning for Sarah, meaning she never fully sorts, and meaning that isn’t quite convincing enough to let her visit Dinah in the hospital. The doctors can’t quite figure out why this random neighbor insists on seeing an adolescent patient who’s still in recovery after nearly dying the night before, and Sarah’s inability to explain herself certainly doesn’t help.

Personally, I think the staff did the right thing, but Sarah only grows suspicious. Who did that nurse call to report Sarah’s request? Who’s the man she saw in the lobby that morning and outside Dinah’s destroyed house the previous night? And what the heck is Gerard doing there?

More and more questions stack up, which leads Sarah to Zoë — or, more accurately, to Zoë’s husband, Joe (Adam Godley). The timid, part-time P.I. and his assertive, part-time wife (they’re still legally married, but she’s all but moved on) take up Sarah’s case, and events unfold accordingly. Zoë isn’t given the same substantive introduction Sarah gets. Her identity is confined to her attitude, her steely spikes of hair a warning not to get too close. Her black leather jacket an emblem of the rebellion she feels from her own frustrating life. Her reproachful patter the only evidence that she’s capable of being hurt, and Joe’s caused it one too many times.

“Down Cemetery Road” is quick to saddle Zoë with ample emotional baggage, but it does little to unpack it. There’s too much plot to get through, too many characters to acknowledge, too many pieces to move into place so a potential Season 2 can hit the ground running. Sarah’s driving question is similarly bobbled back and forth — does she want kids but can’t admit it? Does she not want kids and can’t accept it? Does she really just need to blow up her life before committing to anything as serious as a child? — and once you see where things are headed, it’s all too easy to disengage completely. The only answers in the cards regard what happened to Dinah’s house (and why), which are satisfying enough, if still tightly straddling the lines between affecting and cruel, sensible and conspiratorial.

Our leads rarely put rubber to the road. They’re closer to avatars the audience fills in via projection than the flesh-and-blood screw-ups who populate “Slow Horses.” Thompson is on cruise control — enjoying every no-fucks line, even in redundancy, but Zoë lacks the specificity and command seen in Herron’s better characters. Meanwhile, Banks’ strained attempts to put Sarah on Zoë’s level leave Wilson stranded in a character unfit for the driver’s seat. (I have not read the book, but Sarah feels much closer to someone Zoë works for than someone she works with.)

If you squint, you can see River Cartwright and Jackson Lamb in Sarah and Zoë — the “run fast and think later” agent who nonetheless resents their training wheels and the “drink fast and fart later” veteran who savors being the unlikeliest smart person in every room — just as you can see how “Down Cemetery Road” could become the “Slow Horses” successor Apple TV seeks. If that’s the plan, Zoë Boehm’s next ride may be smoother after all this setup, but it’s hard to know what to expect after a less-than-distinguished opening.

Grade: C

“Down Cemetery Road” premieres Wednesday, October 29 on Apple TV with two episodes. New episodes will be released weekly through the finale on December 10.