If we pay attention to the renewals of Slow Horses, the series that adapts Mick Herron’s novels, we can assume that it is one of the most profitable series on Apple TV. Every time a season of the thriller with Gary Oldman says goodbye, the next one is already filmed (and is renewed for at least a fifth season). So it’s only fitting that the content platform has commissioned another Herron adaptation: Down Cemetery Road with Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson in the lead roles.
When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford neighborhood and a girl goes missing in the aftermath, neighbor Sarah Tucker (Wilson) becomes obsessed with finding her and enlists the help of private investigator Zoë Boehm (Thompson). Zoë and Sarah suddenly encounter a complex conspiracy that reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living quickly join the dead.
The idea, it seems, is to mix thriller and comedy again: it features Morwenna Banks, who worked on the first two seasons of Slow Horses, and Apple TV sells Down Cemetery Road as “funny and biting.” “Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson will make her Slow Horses’ essential companion on our service,” explained Jay Hunt, creative director of the platform in Europe.
Emma Thompson, winner of an Oscar for the screenplay of Sense and Sensibility and as an actress for Return to Howard’s End, participates in the executive production as does Mick Herron.
Thompson’s last significant television role was as a populist prime minister in Russell T. Davies’ visionary miniseries Years and Years while Ruth Wilson, of Luther fame, has recently been in The Woman on the Wall.
