“Slow Horses” is the unlikely seed of a franchise. Now in its fifth season, the Apple TV drama follows a gang of screw-up spies who are nobody’s idea of the Avengers, led by Gary Oldman’s irascible, flatulent Jackson Lamb. But “Slow Horses” has grown over time into an Emmy-winning hit, joining a select roster of Apple shows — like “Severance” and “The Studio” — to break out of the streamer’s walled garden and enter the broader culture. With ample source material in British crime author Mick Herron’s Slough House series, now at nine full-length books and counting, “Slow Horses” can continue for years if the principals like. But Herron is prolific, and Apple isn’t content to stop there.
“Down Cemetery Road” is an adaptation of Herron’s debut novel, itself the start of a four-book series that could serve as a road map for future seasons if all goes well. Developed by “Slow Horses” writer (and “Peppa Pig” voice actor!) Morwenna Banks, “Down Cemetery Road” shares some recognizable DNA with its sibling show, despite swapping central London for sleepy Oxford. In a rare TV role, Emma Thompson plays private investigator Zoë Boehm, a misanthrope who combines Lamb’s abrasive bedside manner with the androgynous style of Diana Taverner, the “Slow Horses” intelligence chief played with chilly hauteur by Kristin Scott Thomas. When art conservator Sarah (Ruth Wilson) comes to Zoë and her husband Joe (Adam Godley) — her partner in business and in life — with a missing child to find, both women get caught up in a mys- tery that’s far more than they bargained for.
The child in question is not Sarah’s own, or even one she knows. In fact, “Down Cemetery Road” takes an entire episode to set up its story and connect its main characters, precisely because said protagonists aren’t policemen, MI5 agents or other emissaries of the state. These figures exist in “Down Cemetery Road” as the other side of the cover-up Zoë and Sarah stumble on, and in true Herron fashion, the pair of bureaucrats (Adeel Akhtar and Darren Boyd) come off just as amateurish as their pursuers. When an explosion goes off mid-dinner party near the posh Oxford home Sarah shares with her banker husband Mark (Tom Riley), killing two people and landing a young girl in the hospital, these sniveling functionaries scramble to contain the damage while Sarah sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong.
The question of why Sarah seems so eager to blow up what Zoë derisively calls her “Farrow & Ball life” for the sake of a stranger is what animates Wilson’s frantic, increasingly on-tilt performance. As the plot gets more focused, pitting Sarah and Zoë against a fearsome assassin named Amos (Fehinti Balogun) and his feckless handlers, Sarah gets less and less centered — until she’s close to fully unraveling. Zoë deals with her emotions — and due to a major twist that ends the premiere and kicks off the season in earnest, she’s got plenty to deal with — in the opposite way, repressing them beneath the snappy assertiveness Thompson does so well and throwing herself into the task at hand. Wilson and Thomp- son share relatively few scenes until the final stretch of episodes; “Down Cemetery Road” treats their combative chemistry like a treat to be doled out selectively.
At eight episodes, “Down Cemetery Road” lacks the drum-tight concision that makes “Slow Horses” such an addictive watch. But the show shares enough positive qualities with its predecessor, from a mordant wit to some riveting action once things heat up, that “Slow Horses” fans will find plenty to tide them over between seasons. And with two stars captured on location amid gown-clad dons and grassy quads, “Down Cemetery Road” has a distinct terroir of its own. It’s only a few dozen miles, but it turns out the “Slow Horses” sensibility can travel.
