'Down Cemetery Road' Will Arrive on Apple TV+ for Spooky Season

There's a lot to love about Slow Horses as a British comedy-thriller whodunit series. Still, there's one thing that's undeniably annoying about it, and that's how male-oriented the stories are, and (more importantly) the humor is too. It's an unfortunate drawback that hampers the show's appeal, and while Apple TV+ pretends it doesn't care about viewership, the last year or so has belied that claim. 

Luckily, Slow Horses author Mick Herron didn't just write about the blowhard Jackson Lamb of Slough House; he also has another detective/private investigator character with a franchise, Zoë Boehm, of The Oxford Investigations Series. With Apple TV+ looking to build on Slow Horses' popularity and fill the viewership gap, the obvious solution was to greenlight a Boehm novel for the small screen and see if it also took off. Of course, it would need a British actor on par with the newly minted Sir Gary Oldman. 

In what is great news for everyone, the well-established Dame Emma Thompson was available and signed on to play Boehm, and in even better news, future Dame Ruth Wilson will co-star in the first season as Boehm's client, Sarah Tucker. Finally, Apple will seal the deal by launching Down Cemetery Road at the end of October, directly following the conclusion of Slow Horses Season 5.

Here's the series' synopsis:

When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a girl disappears in the aftermath, neighbor Sarah Tucker becomes obsessed with finding her and enlists the help of private investigator Zoë Boehm. Zoë and Sarah suddenly find themselves in a complex conspiracy that reveals people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.

Thompson and Wilson lead a spectacular cast for the eight-part series. Costars include Adeel Akhtar (Les Misérables), Ella Bruccoleri (The Other Bennet Sister), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Black Doves), Sinead Matthews (Murder is Easy), Tom Goodman-Hill (Mr. Selfridge), Aiysha Hart (We Are Lady Parts), Darren Boyd (Trying), Tom Riley (Lost in Austen), Adam Godley (The Great), Ken Nwosu (Shardlake), and Fehinti Balogun (A Gentleman in Moscow).

Morwenna Banks (Funny Woman) served as the lead writer on the series, with director Natalie Bailey (Run), who helmed all eight episodes. Banks executive produces alongside Thompson, Herron, Jamie Laurenson, Hakan Kousetta, and Tom Nash at 60Forty Films. Down Cemetery Road is currently being treated as a standalone miniseries. However, with Slow Horses running out of novels to adapt, and four Zoë Boehm novels in print, there's a good chance Apple will continue to commission adaptations with Thompson as Boehm, serving as the connecting thread between them.

Slow Horses Season 5 is set to debut on Wednesday, September 24, 2025, with the first two episodes, followed by one episode per week through the end of October. Down Cemetery Road will debut on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on Wednesday, October 29, 2025 (the same day as Slow Horses' finale), followed by new episodes every Wednesday until the beginning of December.