I binged Down Cemetery Road -- all eight episodes -- on Apple TV last night. It's being billed (on Screen Rant) as "the perfect replacement" for Slow Horses, in between its fifth and six seasons, also on Apple TV. Both are adaptations of Mike Herron's novels, and both sport a spiffy amalgam of snappy dialogue and spy-on-spy lethal mischief. But Down Cemetery Road doesn't have a theme-song co-written and performed by Mick Jagger (the best theme for a spy series since "Secret Agent Man"), a lead character who flaunts his flatulence in every episode, and quite the speed of narrative of Slow Horses.
Here's what Down Cemetery Road does have:
- Two brilliant and famous lead stars (Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson) in contrast to one (Gary Oldman). And I thought Wilson's Sarah Trafford was really exceptional.
- A really world-class villain, Amos Crane (played by Fehinti Balogun), who could have worked in any Bond movie.
- Speaking of Bond, Down Cemetery Road has a train scene nearly as edge of your seat as the scene in From Russia with Love.
- Down Cemetery Road has, I don't know, call it more of a soul, than most spy stories, including Slow Horses. I don't recall many tears in my eyes watching Slow Horses, unless they came from laughter, which of course is fine in its own right.
- Down Cemetery Road may have slightly hipper dialogue, with a pretty funny extended disquisition over the term "mansplaining".
No comments:
Post a Comment