Poisonous clowns in the secret service – dream team Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson get into hot water together

Mick Herron is apparently filled with deep doubts about British intelligence. This is evidenced by his "Slough House" series of novels, in which MI5's total professional failures are parked in a branch office and prove themselves in the most chaotic ways, while more successful failures can wreak havoc unchallenged at headquarters in Regent's Park.

From the books—the ninth, "Clown Town," was released in September—comedian Will Smith (not the US actor) has turned a spy series perfectly balanced between thrill and British comedy. Gary Oldman has played the sarcastic "Slough House" director Jackson Lamb since 2022, and Kristin Scott Thomas plays MI-5's number two, Diana Taverner. And Mick Jagger sings the title song. "Slow Horses" is one of the crown jewels of the streaming service Apple TV+.

Herron, now 62, the award-winning author who lives a largely uncrowded life in Oxford, prefers to write, as he revealed to the Guardian, "about failures (...) about people whose ambitions are thwarted." He also creates extremely believable female characters. His first book, "Down Cemetery Road" (2003), which was published in German translation by Diogenes on October 22, features two heroines.

Now it's become a series, too. Restorer Sarah Trafford (housewife Sarah Tucker in the book) and detective Zoë Boehm investigate the disappearance of five-year-old Dinah. And they dig into a secret service hive. The agency is in the process of bombing and shooting something out of existence using explosives and bullets.

Sarah and her husband Mark are hosting a dinner party at their home when the house next door explodes. Sarah mistakenly believes a surviving child to be the girl who saved a butterfly from her bicycle earlier that day. She tries to visit her in the hospital, but is met with ignorance, denial, and secrecy there and from the police.

Her private circle considers her story the figment of an overwrought woman's imagination. But as a restorer, she noticed that Dinah was pixelated out of a photo with firefighters. Something is seriously fishy.

Sarah hires a detective (excellently quirky: Adam Godley), who is later found in his detective agency with his wrists slashed. The knife was lying next to the wrong hand. "He seemed to me like a man who wouldn't plan to slash his wrists," assures his wife, detective Zoë Boehm. Driven by grief and guilt (she's having an affair), she wants to find Joe's killer, as well as the little girl, and thus brings a professional touch to Sarah's search.

A dream team: Ruth Wilson, known from series like "Luther," "The Affair," and "His Dark Materials," is absolutely worth seeing as Ottilie, the average consumer who has to cope with being thrust into a potentially unsurvivable situation. And 66-year-old Emma Thompson, with her short hair and long black leather coat, has sex appeal like never before, along with the sharp tongue Herron's fans love.

Little by little, the two Dinahs get closer to the truth. People are dying, others are returning from the dead. The woman they're looking for, it soon turns out, is a decoy to finally sweep the secret of a terrible government human experiment under the rug. In the end, Dinah is also meant to die. Indeed, everyone is meant to die.

Essentially, the pattern is similar to "Slow Horses." The situation is deadly serious, but witty dialogue, entertaining sidekicks, and humorous scenes are interspersed. For the most part, it works here, too. Perhaps because some of the people responsible for "Slow Horses" are involved.

But not Will Smith, who will also be absent from seasons 6 and 7 of his hit series. Perhaps the Emmy winner's absence explains the one-dimensionality of two important characters.

The MI-5 boss, Bond-style called "C" (Darren Boyd), is a supervillain and war criminal, a master of the man without any scruples, about whom even the new Minister of Defense says: "God, he gives me serious Voldemort vibes."

But for some inexplicable reason, he clings to a complete idiot "in the field": Hamza Malik (Adeel Akhtar) is a perpetually messing up, such a spy caricature that Lamb would simply deny him access to his "Slough House" of idiots. These two characters stumble through the eight episodes as a duo of poisonous, but thankfully highly inefficient, clowns.

Did Herron, this time acting not as a consultant but as a producer, not notice their emptiness?

The showdown "down on Cemetery Street" becomes unintentionally comical with its highly contorted twists and turns. When the bad guys babble on and on instead of finally getting to the murderous point, the viewer eventually loses the fear for the lives of the persecuted.

Which is fatal for a thriller.

“Down Cemetery Road”, first season, eight episodes, based on the novel of the same name by Mike Herron, written by Morwenna Banks; directed by Natalie Bailey, with Emma Thompson, Ruth Wilson, Adeel Akhtar, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Fehinti Balogun, Ken Nwosu, Darren Boyd, Sinead Matthews, Tom Goodman-Hill, Gary Lewis, Steven Cree, Adam Godley (from October 29 on Apple TV+)