'Slow Horses' Fans Are Missing Apple TV's Near-Perfect Mick Herron Thriller

20 hours ago 21

Ruth Wilson as Sarah staring forward at something in Down Cemetery Road

Published Oct 28, 2026, 2:11 PM EDT

Kelcie Mattson is a Senior Features author at Collider. Based in the Midwest, she also contributes Lists, reviews, and television recaps. A lifelong fan of niche sci-fi, high fantasy, Gothic horror, elaborate action, and witty detective fiction, becoming a pop culture devotee was inevitable once the Disney Renaissance, Turner Classic Movies, BBC period dramas, and her local library piqued her imagination.

Rarely seen without a book in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Kelcie explores media history (especially older, foreign, and independent films) as much as possible. You'll also find her enjoying video games, amateur photography, geeking out over all music genres, admiring birds from her porch, trying to overcome her meager baking skills, and attending fan conventions with her Trekkie family.

With all the grace its outcast ensemble doesn’t possess, Slow Horses has stealthily emerged as one of television’s most consistently superb streaming series. For four years, six seasons, and counting, the Apple TV espionage thriller has conducted a masterclass lesson in form, tone, character, and expeditious production schedules, and it shows no signs of slowing down on any of those counts. Dig a little deeper into Apple TV's streaming television catalog, however, and one of their most acclaimed flagship shows isn’t the only ongoing adaptation of a Mick Herron book series.

Last year’s Down Cemetery Road, based on the first installment in Herron's quartet starring private investigator Zoë Boehm, debuted to critical acclaim and sleeper hit numbers. Season 2’s pre-production process has been underway since Apple TV's renewal announcement in December 2025. Thank goodness, because this is the precise kind of show that deserves to thrive. Developed by Morwenna Banks, an alum of Slow Horses' writing team, and starring the spell-binding duo of Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, the eight-episode detective mystery-thriller is a sidesplitting and hair-raising delight with near-limitless potential — a perfect companion to Slow Horses that always stands on its own firm foundation.

What Is 'Down Cemetery Road' About?

One ordinary evening, a house explosion rocks a quiet corner of Oxford. The tragedy kills the building's two adult residents and injures their young daughter, Dinah Singleton (Ivy Quoi). Authorities blame a faulty gas main, but Sarah Trafford (Wilson), a neighboring museum art conservationist and one of the first witnesses to the devastating aftermath, smells something fishy enough to be rancid. The evidence is contradictory and doctored, the hospital rebuffs Sarah's attempts to visit Dinah long enough to deliver a supportive gift, and Dinah seems to vanish from the face of the earth.

Even once these ominous signs progress to face-to-face warnings, Sarah can't stop herself from looking for this innocent, helpless girl. She recruits one half of the husband-and-wife duo running the ramshackle Oxford Investigations, Joe Silvermann (Adam Godley) — and his investigation has an immediate high cost. Rather than surrender to a clear threat, however, Sarah and Joe's wife, the abrasive PI Zoë Boehm (Thompson), take up their side of the hunt with ferocious determination. As their cat-and-mouse pursuit takes them all the way from an Oxford suburb to a Scottish island, they uncover a scenario far more sinister than even their worst suspicions — a corrupt black ops assignment, its origins reaching the highest levels of the British government.

'Down Cemetery Road' Revitalizes Detective Mysteries in the Same Way as 'Slow Horses'

First and foremost, it's almost impossible to go wrong with Thompson and Wilson playing a well-rounded two-hander of this magnitude. Thompson's Zoë strikes an unapologetically electrifying figure from the shoulders of her faded black leather jacket to the soles of her trusty Doc Martens. A messy, caustic, and foul-mouthed antiheroine whose riotously withering one-liners make everyone in the vicinity want to crawl into their own graves, Zoë fails to be as emotionally impenetrable as she carries herself, and is all the more endearing for it.

Wilson’s effortless charisma enlivens Sarah from a stereotypical concerned civilian in over her head to a multifaceted and thoroughly capable woman. Like the most successful amateur detectives, Sarah's unique skill (art restoration) ensures she notices minute details and inconsistencies. She dashes headlong past warning signs like a damsel in distress might, but she's quick-thinking and self-sufficient, stubborn and compassionate — a bored risk-taker who either thrives off adrenaline or soars once she frees herself from her stifling life. Together, Zoë and Sarah's buddy comedy chemistry utterly crackles. Thompson and Wilson make magic together, landing in that opposites-attract sweet spot between awkward, exasperated, and begrudgingly respectful.

Down Cemetery Road shares obviously recognizable DNA with its sister series without feeling like a less inspired copy of its predecessor. Rather, it revitalizes the traditional mystery structure the same way Slow Horses injects fresh adrenaline into the espionage genre — an iron-clad formula replete with Herron’s signature dry wit, riveting cloak-and-dagger intrigue, white-knuckled twists, exhilaratingly grim action, and a small gathering of misfits and malcontents waging war against bureaucrats and politicians. By the time every disconnected piece neatly fits into the correct order, Down Cemetery Road blossoms into a compact, dazzling variation on its creator's greatest refrains.