🔥EMMA THOMPSON LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HER🔥 The Oscar winner trades warmth for pure ice in a jaw-dropping new 8-part mystery thriller — playing a ruthless private investigator dragged into the disappearance of a teenage girl in an Oxford suburb. What begins as a missing-person case spirals into a web of power, privilege, and corruption that could destroy everything. Alongside Ruth Wilson (Luther), Thompson dives headfirst into a world of locked doors, sealed files, and people who’ll kill to keep their secrets buried. Written by Mick Herron (Slow Horses), critics are calling it “the most addictive series of the year.” But here’s the real twist — it’s not the missing girl that will haunt you… it’s what she left behind.

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In the hallowed spires of Oxford, where ancient stone hides modern sins, a new thriller slithers onto screens, promising to chill spines and shatter illusions. Down Cemetery Road, Apple TV+’s eight-part adaptation of Mick Herron’s 2003 debut novel, reimagines the Oscar-winning Emma Thompson as a flinty private investigator whose warmth has curdled into something far more lethal. Dropping her signature charm for a razor-edge intensity, Thompson’s Zoë Boehm plunges into the vanishing of a teenage girl in a leafy suburb, only to unravel a labyrinth of power, privilege, and festering corruption. Teamed with the electric Ruth Wilson as the dogged neighbor Sarah Trafford, the duo wades through explosions, sealed files, and ruthless gatekeepers determined to bury the truth. Hailed as the “must-watch of the year” for its pulse-pounding tension and gut-wrenching twists, this series—penned by Slow Horses scribe Morwenna Banks—warns that the real ghost isn’t the missing child, but the rot she exposes.

Premiering globally on October 29, 2025, with the first two episodes followed by weekly drops, Down Cemetery Road arrives as Apple TV+’s latest coup in British intrigue. It’s the second Herron adaptation for the streamer, hot on the heels of the Emmy-winning Slow Horses, which boasts Gary Oldman’s grizzled spymaster and a fifth season premiere this September. Yet where Slow Horses skewers bureaucratic espionage with sardonic wit, Down Cemetery Road burrows into domestic dread, transforming a quiet cul-de-sac into a powder keg. An explosion rocks a nondescript home, and in the acrid smoke, young Prue, the daughter of the house, vanishes. Enter Sarah Trafford (Wilson), the buttoned-up neighbor whose suburban ennui ignites into obsession. She hires Zoë Boehm (Thompson), a PI teetering on the edge of ruin—divorced, debt-ridden, and fueled by black coffee and buried grudges—to chase leads. What begins as a frantic missing-persons hunt spirals into a conspiracy implicating Oxford’s elite: academics with locked-away dossiers, politicians with bloodied hands, and shadowy agencies that treat lives like footnotes.

Emma Thompson, twice an Academy Award winner for Howards End and Sense and Sensibility, has long dazzled in roles blending levity and laceration—think her dowdy Miss Trunchbull in Matilda or the acerbic nanny in Nanny McPhee. But Zoë Boehm marks a stark pivot: a woman who “decided not to be a good girl,” as Thompson described her to The Sydney Morning Herald. Clad in rumpled trench coats and nursing a perpetual scowl, Boehm is Herron’s hard-boiled heart—a chain-smoking sleuth whose empathy has been cauterized by betrayal. “She’s brilliant but broken,” Thompson explained in a Variety profile, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “Zoë doesn’t trust anyone, least of all herself. Playing her meant excavating the rage I’ve always channeled into humor.” Early footage captures Thompson in a brutal interrogation, her eyes like chipped flint as she dismantles a suspect’s alibi, a far cry from the twinkly-eyed warmth of Love Actually. Critics from advance screeners rave: The Hollywood Reporter calls it “Thompson’s most ferocious turn since In the Loop,” praising how she wields sarcasm like a switchblade.

Opposite her crackles Ruth Wilson, the Golden Globe-nominated force behind Luther’s twisted Alice Morgan and His Dark Materials’s steely Mrs. Coulter. As Sarah, Wilson embodies the unraveling everymom: a PR consultant whose polished facade masks a void of marital malaise and unspoken longings. When Prue disappears, Sarah’s fixation isn’t maternal—it’s existential. “She’s like you or me, thrust into a thriller and thrilled by it,” Wilson told TV Insider, laughing at the irony. “Mick wrote her as this eccentric wildcard, someone who discovers purpose in the peril.” Their chemistry is the series’ pulse: Boehm’s cynicism clashing with Sarah’s naive zeal, forging an unlikely alliance that propels them from Oxford’s cloistered colleges to rain-slicked back alleys. In the trailer, a breathless chase through fog-shrouded streets—Wilson hauling Thompson from a crumbling ledge—hints at the action-thriller escalation, with Wilson noting the final episodes “go mad, wild, and brutal, like an odyssey on steroids.”

Mick Herron, the Gold Dagger-winning architect of Slow Horses’ Slough House misfits, returns to his roots with Down Cemetery Road, the first of his Zoë Boehm Quartet. Published in 2003, the novel earned acclaim for its labyrinthine plot and Herron’s hallmark blend of mordant humor and geopolitical grit—snippets of real-world scandals woven into fictional frenzy, as AudioFile Magazine raved. The series, helmed by director Natalie Bailey (Killing Eve) and scripted by Morwenna Banks (who penned Slow Horses episodes and Funny Woman), amplifies the book’s suburban paranoia. Banks, an executive producer alongside Thompson, Herron, and 60Forty Films’ Jamie Laurenson, Hakan Kousetta, and Tom Nash, infuses the adaptation with “funny and acerbic” bite, per Apple’s Jay Hunt. Filmed on location in Oxford and London’s fringes, the production captures the city’s dual soul: postcard prettiness masking a “nest of vipers,” as one character sneers.

The ensemble bolsters the intrigue. Adeel Akhtar (Sweet Tooth) slinks as Hamza, a jittery academic with more secrets than syllabi; Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Candyman) brings haunted intensity to Downey, Boehm’s reluctant informant; Tom Goodman-Hill (The Crown) oozes oily entitlement as Gerard, a power broker whose privilege is his armor; and Darren Boyd (Spy) chews scenery as the enigmatic “C.,” a government fixer who’d kill to keep records sealed.

What elevates Down Cemetery Road beyond genre tropes is its unflinching gaze at rot beneath respectability. Advance buzz from Deadline and Tom’s Guide dubs it “perfect for Slow Horses devotees,” lauding the “relentless tension” and “brutal reveals” that peel back Oxford’s veneer to expose class warfare and institutional decay. Social media erupts with trailer reactions: X threads dissect Boehm’s chain-smoking monologues as “peak Thompson ferocity,” while Reddit’s r/television hails Wilson’s “unhinged descent” as Emmy bait. Yet it’s the haunting core—the not-missing girl, but the unearthed horrors—that lingers. As Sarah whispers in Episode 3’s screener cut, “We thought we were hunting a ghost. Turns out, we’re the ones being buried.”

In a fall slate crowded with capes and cozies, Down Cemetery Road carves a cold, compelling niche. Thompson, ice-queen incarnate, and Wilson, firebrand unleashed, deliver career-defining turns in a tale that weaponizes privilege against its perpetrators. As Herron’s Oxford unravels, so does our faith in locked doors and sealed lips. Tune in October 29—not for the girl who vanished, but for the truths that won’t stay dead. In Boehm’s world, investigation isn’t justice; it’s excavation, and the skeletons are just warming up.