If you didn’t already know that Down Cemetery Road was based on a novel Mick Herron wrote before the Slough House series – later adapted into TV’s Slow Horses – it mightn’t be too difficult to guess.
After all, main character Zoë Boehm (Emma Thompson, no less) is a cynical sixty-something with a dodgy hygiene regime, who works in a ferociously shabby office and communicates mainly through the medium of the heartless yet undeniably funny wisecrack – but who nonetheless shouldn’t be underestimated by the arse-covering intelligence services she’s up against. She is, in other words, a female version of Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb (also played by an Oscar-winning Brit).
Unlike Lamb, however, Zoë isn’t a spook herself, but a private detective in Oxford where most of her heartless wisecracks were initially directed at her rather unfortunate colleague and even more unfortunate husband, Joe (Adam Godley).
In this week’s first episode of two, the pair were called in by Sarah Trafford (Ruth Wilson), an art conservationist first seen conserving some art, and then hosting a dinner party for the ghastly Gerard (Tom Goodman-Hill), potential client of her banker husband. For a while, the dinner party was largely concerned with confirming Gerard’s ghastliness: his sneering distaste for the lower orders, his robust views on lefties of all kinds, his patronising attitude to the ladies. Luckily, the meal came to a premature end when the house opposite exploded.
The blast killed the woman living there, but her young daughter Dinah was rescued by firefighters and taken to South Oxford hospital. For reasons that appear to combine the neighbourly with something linked to her own childhood, Sarah tried to visit Dinah there, but was met with a mysterious shiftiness from the medical staff and a flat refusal to let her see the little girl. A similar thing happened when she went to the police, who shiftily told her that Dinah’s file was flagged as ‘secret’.
It was at this point that Sarah came across an office belonging to Oxford Investigations, went in and was instantly subjected to a wisecrack assault from Zoë. Joe, though, agreed to take on the case, with his wife joining later.
As in Slow Horses, even apparently major characters are by no means guaranteed to make it out alive
What none of them knew – but we did – is that the house explosion wasn’t caused by gas, as the papers had assiduously reported. Instead, it had been the work of a freelance agent employed by British intelligence. Back in London, its bullying boss, C (Darren Boyd), was soon giving Gerard a run for his money in the broad-brush characterisation stakes, as he swearily instructed an underling to make the story – and if necessary ‘the woman nosing around the hospital’ – go away.
But all that was only for starters. Down Cemetery Road has now developed into the sort of endlessly twisting conspiracy thriller in which virtually nobody, however innocuous-seeming, can be trusted. Again as in Slow Horses, the constant wrong-footing of the audience is also helped by the fact that even apparently major characters are by no means guaranteed to make it out alive.
The programme has plenty of classy elements: the cinematography, the neatly sketched-in cameo roles, Thompson’s performance, pretty much everyone else’s. Nevertheless, it never forgets that its primary job, carried out with admirable diligence, is to thrill. Which makes the final resemblance to Slow Horses almost cruel: from now on we’ll be getting only one episode a week – and I suspect Tuesday’s agonising cliffhanger won’t be the last.
From there, it’s quite a handbrake turn to Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, where the sixtysomething protagonists prefer to drink tea than kick ass, and where the biggest thrills come from such things as a change of fishing rod.
Now back for an eighth series, this has been one of the more surprising hits of recent years. But it’s also one of the most deserved – and, in its own way, one of the most uncompromising. Sunday’s opener duly started with lots of unhurried shots of rural Hampshire set to music by Debussy (thank you, Shazam) and a discussion of the Parachute Adams Klinkhammer fly. Bob and Paul then stood in the Itchen river for a (fairly long) bit until they caught a grayling – a fish that could possibly do with a better brand-name consultant, given that it’s so beautifully coloured.
Once they’d retired to a lodge for the evening, their talk turned – as it often does – to the weird business of growing old. The episode took place on Paul’s birthday, causing him to mutter ‘67?’ in a disbelieving tone, before the conversation moved on – as it often does – to their various ailments. The following day, they went back to the river for the big finish: the brief catching of a brown trout which they immediately returned to the water.
And with that, another helping of quietly charming television was over for the week.
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