Apple TV Sends Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson “Down Cemetery Road” in Style | TV/Streaming

It’s fitting that Ruth Wilson’s Sarah Trafford is an art restorer in the stylish and captivating Apple TV series “Down Cemetery Road,” the new drama from the creators of “Slow Horses.” Just as Sarah looks for tiny tears, scales, and other flaws in mostly pristine and captivating paintings, if we look too closely at the plot machinations in this conspiracy thriller, we’ll find a host of convenient coincidences, plausibility-stretching developments, and familiar tropes of the genre. But if we’re willing to step back and not get bogged down in the details, it’s powerfully entertaining stuff, full of satisfying twists and turns.

Also great: we have Emma Thompson as Detective Zoë Boehm, who has spiky hair and an even spikier personality, and behaves like she fronted a murderous punk-rock band in the 1980s and is always looking for a fight at every turn. What superb and natural work, as if we expected anything less. Whether Thompson as Zoë is smart, clashes with people who think they’re one step ahead of her (he’s not), or lets her guard down for just a moment, it’s a performance that should be marveled at and cherished.

Wilson does a charming, nuanced job as Trafford, who pedals her bike around Oxford and the surrounding suburbs, including her daily trips back and forth to this job as an art restorer (cue Sharon Van Etten’s “Every Time the Sun Comes Up” on the soundtrack as she strolls along). Sarah enjoys a comfortable life with her husband, Mark (Tom Riley), a hedge fund manager who clearly puts his career before Sarah, but we can see Sarah’s turmoil and anxiety even before shit hits the fan and all hell breaks loose in her life.

The Traffords host a small dinner party attended by an arrogant and wealthy potential client of Mark’s named Gerard Inchon (Tom Goodman-Hill); Gerard’s wife Paula (Aiysha Hart); and Sarah’s bohemian friends, Denise aka Wigwam (Sinead Matthews) and her partner Rufus (Ken Nwosu), when an explosion literally on (the fictional) Cemetery Road leaves a 5-year-old girl named Dinah (Ivy Malaika Quelle) injured and orphaned. When Sarah tries to deliver a handmade get well card from one of the Wigwam children to Dinah at the hospital, she is quickly kicked out and runs into Gerard, the wealthy investor, in what seems like a strange coincidence.

After Dinah disappears, Sarah becomes obsessed with finding her, even though she has never met the little girl, enlisting the services of the low-end, husband-and-wife private detective team of the sardonic Zoë Boehm (Emma Thompson) and her affable but slightly daffy husband, Joe (Adam Godley). They usually take on low-key, slightly sordid cases, such as following husbands who cheat on their wives, but soon find themselves embroiled in a high-stakes mystery. (“Maybe this case could go all the way to the top,” Zoë says. She’s being sarcastic, but maybe she’s not wrong.)

Here we go. Was it really a gas line explosion in that house, or something more sinister? Who was the mystery man Sarah saw hiding near the site? Why are the police obstructing Sarah’s attempts to get answers? With precise editing that moves the multi-faceted story forward at a rapid pace and striking use of locations such as the cathedral city of Bristol, the county of Somerset and the fishing village of Polperro, “Down Cemetery Road” becomes a two-person game, with Zoë reluctantly teaming up with Sarah to find Dinah. Then it turns into a much larger conspiracy mystery, as the death toll begins to pile up. At times, Zoë and Sarah’s almost comical misadventures don’t fit neatly with a storyline reminiscent of shows like “The Terminal List” and “Special Ops: Lioness,” and it’s a bit of a task to keep track of the various storylines.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett is a formidable presence as Michael Downey, a former soldier dealing with the after-effects of his service. Darren Boyd is a darkly funny, yet frightening, presence as the dapper and utterly soulless “C” who runs a shadowy ministry. In perhaps the most electric performance outside of the lead roles, Fehinti Balogun plays Amos Crane, one of the most terrifying men for hire this side of Anton Chigurh; this man ends his life as casually as if he were tying his shoes and with the cold determination of a shark in bloody waters. (In a plot misstep, standout actor Adeel Akhtar is given the role of a middle-management government agent who is mostly irritating and spends too much screen time.)

“Down Cemetery Road” is full of sharp lines, but also impressive action scenes, highlighted by a long sequence on a train where Zoë takes intelligent and sometimes desperate measures to escape a relentless pursuer. I also liked that Wilson’s Sarah didn’t suddenly become an action hero who could climb barbed wire and handle a gun with the ease of a professional. She’s a lost and troubled soul who will do anything to find a little girl, and even though she’s in over her head and constantly putting herself in danger, she feels a sense of freedom in finally finding meaning in her life.

All eight episodes were screened for review. Episodes air Wednesdays on Apple TV.