'Down Cemetery Road' Fills Out Cast Ahead of 'Slow Horses' Season 4

Apple TV+'s adaptation of Mick Herron's Slough House series, Slow Horses, has become the streaming series biggest hit since Ted Lasso, growing audience year-on-year since Seasons 1 and 2 debuted practically back-to-back in 2021. To that end, the streaming service is doubling down on British mysteries. Earlier this summer, the streaming service announced it had bought the rights to Herron's other series of novels, The Oxford Mysteries. Like Slow Horses, the series is named for the first book, Down Cemetery Road; Emma Thompson (Why Didn't They Ask Evans) and Ruth Wilson (The Woman in the Wall) have been set to star.

Apple TV+ is not the least-watched service, but out of the "Major Players" in the U.S. market (Netflix, Disney+/Hulu, Max, Prime Video, Peacock, Paramount+), it lags woefully behind in the number of subscribers. This is because Apple doesn't push the streaming service on its users. If it followed its competitors' model and force-signed every person who bought an Apple device to its service (like everyone who uses Amazon Prime to shop is a "Prime Video subscriber"), it would easily match Netflix's numbers. Instead, it's been satisfied to let shows do as they will, like Slow Horses, which became a hit despite only minor marketing for its first two seasons.

However, Apple is starting to change its tune after an embarrassing run of flops. Down Cemetery Road is the company's first attempt at building a homegrown franchise. The company calls it "a companion piece" to Slow Horses and timing its announcements around the Season 4 marketing schedule, including rolling out an impressive cast for the new series less than a week before the latest season of Slow Horses debuts.