Down Cemetery Road is a terrifying detective treatment of Slow Horses Stable – review

Before publishing his first detective novel, slow horsesAnd before Gary Oldman wandered into the slough house in an irritable, flatulent haze, Mick Heron wrote down cemetery roadAbout an Oxford private eye named Zoë Boehm. It was excellent, that poignant Heron’s narrative voice was so important to its success. slow horses‘Apple TV adaptation, already pervading the pages.

It’s no surprise that their 2003 debut has now been given the Apple treatment. emma thompson plays the eccentric, spiky-haired Boheme; Ruth Wilson Art restorer Sarah Tucker hires the investigator after a harrowing dinner party ends abruptly due to a gas main explosion on her quiet street. It is adapted by screenwriter Morwenna Banks slow horsesThe result is a detective-story-cum-adventure-yarn that grows on you the more the bodies pile up. Oxford has not seen so many murders since Inspector MorseHowever, far from comfortable Sunday-night fare, down cemetery road An increasingly unsettling exercise in paranoia, an eight-part mystery that explores the national mood of institutional distrust amid bureaucratic malaise. Some clever commissioning, that.

If you pick apart the threads of the story, yes, it’s a little messy here and there, but it requires a special kind of alchemy to make such astringently strange humor sit so seamlessly with such horrific acts. Tonight, it really should be even more disturbing than that. It doesn’t have much to do with the main acting. They’re brilliant: Wilson conveys wide-eyed intensity with characteristic ease; Thompson is all cruel, unsympathetic energy as Boehm, called in to be dragged into a conspiracy after Tucker attempts to deliver a card to a child injured in an explosion.

There are cover-ups; suspicious government officials; A nefarious organization. Contrasting all this is the dialogue, which is full of staunch, Heronian humor. Take this exchange between Zoey and her husband, Joe, who is played like a kicked puppy by Adam Godley.

Zoey: “No one has used their Dictaphone since 1982.”

Joe: “No, you’re right. He used his finger.”

You could argue that there’s something perversely anachronistic about a conspiracy thriller set in 2025, when the global climate already feels like some kind of distant nightmare. But whatever, I still found myself enthralled by the chemistry of the cast and a plot that has more twists than a politician’s expense claim. Kudos to Banks for turning Heron’s novel into a real maze without making it incomprehensible. slow horses It may not happen, but down cemetery road It’s its own beast: fast, fun and incredible.