‘Down Cemetery Road’: Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson Excel as Reluctant Spies in Apple TV+’s Mick Herron Adaptation

Tony Sokol

Allegedly, military Intelligence is not as bright as it would like the public to believe. In Apple TV+’s new British thriller series, human error and rushed judgement expose a horrific secret being contained through lethal indifference. “Down Cemetery Road” is a very heavy drama that never loses its sense of humor. A mysterious explosion leaves a two-person body count, and a missing girl, named Dinah (Ivy Quoi), in a quiet suburb of Oxford. Sarah Tucker (Ruth Wilson) is just being neighborly when dropping off a card to an injured child who lost her parents but she is drawn into a web of inconsistencies and coverups. Private investigator Zoë Boehm (Emma Thompson) doesn’t think the case will amount to much, even as her husband, Joe Silverman (Adam Godley), believes it “goes straight to the top.” She has reason to hate him for being right.

Though we learn about Joe in retrospect, he seems to be a very sweet man, and a decent private investigator. Not a good one, but a decent one, who never made money because he cared too much about the clients. This is not lost on Sarah Tucker, who repeatedly finds reminders of the Philip Marlowe wannabe who cracked a hole in an impossible case. “Down Cemetery Road” is an action-packed thriller, and chase series. But it also deals with grief, and larger forces at play in a dangerous world encroaching on local communities.

As serious as the topics become, and as violent as the circumstances require, the most dangerous weapon is Emma Thompson’s tongue. Zoë’s retorts can deflate lesser minds in minutes, much like Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) in Apple TV+’s “Slow Horses.” This is because both series come from novels by Mick Herron. “Down Cemetery Road” is based on Herron’s book series “The Oxford Investigations,” and can easily expand into future seasons.

“Down Cemetery Road” keeps things moving, cutting between action and, usually acerbic, British wit. Though Zoë is the books’ main character, this series is seen mostly through the eyes of Sarah. She is just a concerned neighbor, an art restorer with a demeaning husband who brags about his “real job that allows you to do whatever it is you do.” Blind to unrest at home, Sarah’s obsession with finding the missing girl is both alien and relatable. Wilson commits her entire body language to telling the story. During college, Sarah was traumatized after falling, or jumping, from a roof. “Drugs may have been involved,” she admits. But Wilson gives the impression Sarah tumbles forward toward the unknown end of the journey, or a state-sanctioned death, physically as well as mentally. She very often appears to be literally pushing herself forward. Sarah sometimes doubts her own sanity for coming this far, yet finds hidden clues, ghost islands, and lost children.

Zoë Boehm is rough around the edges, unpolished in social settings, combative, cynical, bored, flawed, and realistic. Dinah calls her “the cross woman,” and all Sarah can respond is, “well, she can be mean, quite mean,” but actually continues on like that for a while. At one point, Zoe is falsely identified as a suspect in a double murder, described as a woman with “spiky gray hair and leather jacket” by someone wanting to get Zoe out of the way. “She is the very face of evil,” sobs the assassin posing as a witness: Zoë’s primary nemesis, Amos (Fehinti Balogun), whose name is probably an alias due to the overriding subterfuge of military intelligence.

The second Amos clicks off the phone, any trace of shock disappears and the audience realizes he is acting for the emergency line. Amos does this several times, and each time the effect is incredibly menacing. But it also occasionally coaxes chuckles because watching a giggling student turn into a dead-souled psychotic in the blink of an eye is funny, especially after Thompson’s Zoë set the standard for offbeat humor. Amos’ colleagues are more frighteningly parodied.

Contrary to their public disclosures, the antagonists of “Down Cemetery Road” are incredibly transparent. They wear bad intent on their sleeves like cufflinks, or chests like medals. Dead-eyed and deadpan, Deputy Defense Minister C (Darren Boyd) is a bone-chilling administrative facilitator whose greatest weapon is the shredder. Not all of these dissemblers are machines. Adeel Akhtar brings the best kind of evil to Military Intelligence operative Hamza: inept.

The military intelligence world is revealed to be an absurd reality. The video footage of the chemical weapons experiments done on the soldiers are horrific, realistically shot before the quick fades. Dina’s uncle, Downey (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), is the closest thing to the heroic standard. A victim of the chemical warfare tests, his niece is being used as bait.

Witty and unsentimental, “Down Cemetery Road” is a character-driven dive into dark espionage, with imperfect heroes. The monsters are human, the conspiracies hit home, the coverups leave collateral damage. This eight-episode series is also a road trip story for Thompson and Wilson, but down a wild and dangerous path.

“Down Cemetery Road” begins streaming Oct. 29 on Apple TV+.