Down Cemetery Road (S01E01-02)

Apple’s latest thriller starts with relatively small stakes: a house explosion with one survivor, a young girl named Dinah, catches the notice of an Oxford art conservator played by Ruth Wilson (The Affair, His Dark Materials). On her search for the child’s whereabouts and the suspicious circumstances around the blast, she enlists the help of a two-headed detective agency. That’s where the conspiracy takes hold, the bodies start adding up, and the other main character, Zoë, played by Emma Thompson, joins the fray. On this podcast, we review the first two episodes and discuss our thoughts, observations, and hopes for the rest of the series.
Tune in and enjoy. Welcome to Today’s Episode!

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:15):
Welcome to today's episode, the podcast, where we
discuss the most recentinstallments of a different
series every show.
It is November 3rd, the day thatthe Russians sent a dog into
space.
Do you know how they chose thedog?
No.
They had like three contestants,and this dog was not like some
purebred dog that they workedfrom birth.
It was actually a ranging, uh, agrungy mutt that they picked up

(00:36):
off the street and then theytrained.
And part of the reason they didthat was because they thought it
would be used to the elements.
Think about it.
In Russia, it's got to be supercold, and then sometimes, I
guess, muggy and hot.
And they were just like, ifthere's anything, any species
that can survive in space for afew days, it's gonna be a dog.
And so that's why they shot upLeica.
She was never meant to survive,and she did pass, I think, in

(00:57):
the third day.
They have a monument in uhRussia, but also in the US, in
Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in NewYork.
That's America's oldest petcemetery.
I I I wonder if there are like alot of famous animals there.
Well, what other ones?
Bambi Airbud.
Bambian Airbud.
Every babe, you know, the pig,they just ship them out there

(01:18):
every time.

SPEAKER_01 (01:19):
I remember when Leica was, I or remember
learning that when Leica wasshot up into space, that was the
thing that put the Russians ontop of the space race at the
time.

SPEAKER_00 (01:27):
It kicked America into gear and they were like, we
gotta send a human next.
Um, yeah, and so we're talkingabout cemeteries today.
Down Cemetery Road, which isbased on a book by Mick Heron.
It was his first novel in 2003.
Correct me if I'm wrong aboutany of these facts because I
only looked at them reallyquickly.
Then this TV show was adapted byMorwina Banks.
Should I know that name?

SPEAKER_01 (01:47):
Uh, not Morina Banks, but Mick Heron, do you
know what his big series is?
What is his big series?
Uh Slow Horses.
He is the author.
It's spelled differently,though, right?
Well, so that's the interestingthing because the series is
Sloth House.
Yeah, but the first few novelsof which were adapted for the
Slow Horses television series,hence the Slow Horses ad that

(02:10):
played before this on our.

SPEAKER_00 (02:11):
Well, hence Apple being so big on this.
Because for some reason, SlowHorses has just been incubating
and getting bigger and biggerand bigger underneath
everybody's eye.
And at this point, it's likereached an all-level high of
like people watching.
I think it's on the top of itscharts.

SPEAKER_01 (02:25):
It just finished season five.
It's already been renewed forseason six and season seven.
And you watched the first seasonof Slow Horses, right?
I did a long time ago.
I wanted to see it just basedoff the first uh two episodes.
If you agree with how RuthWilson talked about it, she
plays Sarah Tucker in thisseries, described the show in
relation to that.
She said, McCarron creates theseacerbic witty thrillers down

(02:46):
Cemetery Road is funnier, moreeccentric, more British in a
way, and darker and more twisty.

SPEAKER_00 (02:52):
Um I would not say more twisty, but I would say it
is even funnier.
I don't know, man.
That's a hard one to say.
I like she's trying to sell it.
I get that.
But let's let's save ourimpressions until the end,
right?
Or at least deliver themthroughout the plot.
So down cemetery road, twoepisodes came out, two hours

(03:13):
long, almost true, and a kind ofgrief.
And I have sort of a like, youknow, uh love-hate relationship
with Apple TV shows at thispoint.
Severance, Pachinko, Silo, thestudio, the after party, they
know how to put out bangers.
Right.
They have good TV.
And then they also, and thistends to be the conspiracy
thriller part of their likelineup, Prime Target, Surface,

(03:34):
uh, the Changeling, Invasion.
Um, yeah, to a certain extent,but like those ones are
fundamentally flawed, in myopinion.
And the formula is the same foreach because you've got
top-notch production value,you've got big screen talent,
limited episodes.
So they're definitely liketrying to contain the quality
over quantity, and yet it justdoesn't always deliver.
And so going into this, I didn'tknow whether or not it was or if

(03:56):
it wasn't.
Um, you do have a lot offamiliar faces popping up here.
I recognized Ruth Wilson fromThe Affair, as well as his dark
materials.
I kept waiting for her monkey toshow up because she has a monkey
in his dark materials in Oxford,and she's at Oxford here.
So that was weird.
Also, the one the woman in thewall and Luther.
That's where she, yeah.
Uh there's succession with AdamGodley.

(04:17):
You've got Sweet Tooth uh alum,you've got Preacher Alum, Baby
Reindeer guy, Misfits dude,Curtis from Misfits.
And it's just all about thisagency that's trying to cover up
the existence of a little girlnamed Dinah.
Um, let's jump into it.
So, Ruth Wilson is Sarah Tucker.
She is an art restorationspecialist at the Oxford Museum.

(04:39):
I wonder how she got that job.
She used to be a student atOxford, we learn, but she's
really good.
She has a good eye for pickingout who did what.
Like they try to bring in apainting and say it was done by
some famous painter, and she'slike, No, he never used cobalt
blue.
That must be his wife.
Was it done in such like a uhSherlock way or Sherlock and
daughter where it's like closesubs?

(05:00):
They are trying to show you thatshe's smart.
So I'll say that, but it's likeshe just squints at stuff and
she'll figure it out.
She's not particularly sociable,doesn't seem like she'd be a
great friend to have.
She speaks her mind.
Um, and her life is so-so, she'sgot the stable job, a boyfriend
who it doesn't seem that shelike really likes that much by
the end.
I'm not really sure why they'retogether.

(05:20):
And then she rides around on abike.
So she doesn't have a car.
It's with that bike that on herway home, what would you say?
Because you saw the firstepisode, you didn't see the
second episode.
I saw both.
What would you say the incitingincident of this thriller is?
The explosion.
A lot of people would say theexplosion.
To me, I think it actually iswhen she almost hits this girl

(05:41):
with the bike.
Because if that never happened,she would not, for the rest of
the two episodes, be obsessedwith finding Dinah.
Okay, so the girl is Dinah.
That's what we're led to believein the first episode.
In the second episode, we findout that it's not.
So she she nearly runs into thisgirl.
The girl runs up, grabs abutterfly, they lock eyes, and

(06:01):
there's this connection there.
Not a romantic connection, butone where she's like, I bond
with this girl.
I know who she is.
I used to be so imaginative.
And then the mom comes and picksup the girl and they leave.
Now that all happens in thecourse of like 30 seconds, and
they're putting a lot on thepressure of the actors to
deliver, to believe that thereis that love there that is

(06:22):
making this bond happen.
Unspoken connection.
Were they able to do so though?
No, absolutely not.
And not 30 seconds.
That's what makes the rest ofthis so crazy because she she
goes on a wild goose chase,trying to make sure that this
girl is okay later on in theepisode.
And we have to wonder why.
So she goes home, she's throwinga dinner party, she throws the
lasagna from the freezer intothe uh into the uh oven.

(06:45):
The funny thing about this isthat this is no like small
dinner party.
Her boyfriend is trying toimpress his boss slash person
that he's about to go intobusiness with, Gerard Incheon,
who's a billionaire, and hiswife Paula, they're gonna be
stopping by.
You'd think that they would havelike prepared a little bit more
than a frozen lasagna.
Also, their neighbors are gonnabe there.

(07:06):
Their neighbors are bohemians.
Uh, so one of them is namedWigwiam, and the other is Rufus,
and they have like four kids.
And yeah, in the dinner party,while things are very awkward
because, like I said, RuthWilson's character, Sarah, likes
to speak her mind.
She's not getting along with uhhighly elite uh billionaire
douchebag uh Gerard.

SPEAKER_01 (07:26):
Tom Goodman Hill.
He was nominated for anoutstanding supporting actor at
the primetime Emmys for his rolein Baby Reindeer.
And it's funny because he kindof started out, you know, he was
the good character in humans.

SPEAKER_00 (07:37):
He was the dad and he was like kind of a cheesy
funny dude.
And then by Baby Reindeer, hehad Don Heal and he was the bad
guy.
And now he's he will be, yeah,he will be playing evil for a
while.
He he turns out by the end ofthe first episode that he's just
a douchebag, that he's notactually evil, evil.
But yeah, you have thisexplosion that happens, it rocks
the whole party, the glassbreaks, and everybody finds out

(07:59):
that because they go runningoutside, that there was a uh
that it was actually the nextdoor neighbor or one of the
neighbors down the street.
And it was said to be a gasexplosion, killed everybody in
the house, including this kid'smom.
And the kid, though, survived.
Uh, she was, I guess, protectedby a bookcase or something that
fell down on top of her, acabinet that like trapped her

(08:21):
underneath during the heat ofthe explosion.

SPEAKER_01 (08:23):
It was reminiscent to me of episode five of
Daredevil, where an explosionhappens in New York, and you see
Foggy and Karen, they're sittingat a table and glass flies
everywhere at slow-mo and theygo toppling to the floor.

SPEAKER_00 (08:34):
They use slow-mo there, they use slow-mo at the
end of the episode.
Yeah, they're not afraid of it.
Um, so uh the police are there,everybody's got their phones
out, and in fact, Sarah tellsher boyfriend to put it away.
Um, you see this likesuspicious, shady character in
the side, and they take themom's body and they stick it in
like the like wherever the deadbodies go, uh, the morgue, and

(08:55):
uh and then everybody kind ofdisperses.
But before then, it occurs toSarah that she probably knew the
kid.
The kid was probably the sameone who she ran into earlier and
she felt really bad about that.
The next day, Wigwam, theneighbor, comes up and she's
like, I got this letter from mykid who wants to give it to uh
Dinah, the in the hospital.

(09:15):
And uh at that point, Sarah'slike, Let me do it.
I really want to go and see thischild who I barely met, but I'll
I'll take the note.
Please let me do that.
The funny thing about the noteis it it literally just says,
sorry your mom did.
In other words, sorry your momdied.
Yeah.
But that seems like a reallybleak thing to give a kid, like
right after they're especiallybecause they're in the hospital
and they're trying to be smokeinhalation that they're dealing

(09:38):
with.
Yeah.
So with absolutely nocredentials and no connection to
the family, and absolutely nolegitimate reason to be able to
see this child, she marches intothe hospital and she confronts a
nurse, and the nurse says, Letme check on this.
And she cut gets her, like Idon't know if it was a doctor or
another nurse, probably ahigher-level nurse to come out
and say, We cannot confirmwhether or not this kid is here.

(10:00):
And that's a child safety thing.
I completely understand wherethey're coming from.
But at this point, Sarah goescomplete Karen.
She has a connection with thischild and she says, I need to
see her.
I need to be the one to give herthis note.
Who knows why?
Rather than just dropping it offthere.
It made no sense.
And they almost call security onher.
And I completely am in thehospital's camp.

SPEAKER_01 (10:21):
I don't mean to like influence your opinion, but it
was just the craziest scene toactually watch because you're
supposed to be on Sarah's side.
I know we talked about the30-second, like unspoken
connection, but what is fuelingthis fixation with Dinah do you
think it's like guilt, fear,something like that?

SPEAKER_00 (10:37):
She just says it later on, right, when she hires
the uh detective agency to findout about this girl.
Uh he's like, so what's reallymotivating you?
And she's like, I see her in me.
In the second episode, we get alittle bit more understanding,
but not too much.
With how the hospital reacted,what is fueling Sarah's
skepticism?
Like just she just didn't likethat.

(10:58):
They wouldn't even confirm.
The guy comes out and he's like,We cannot tell you whether or
not she's even here.
And she says, Who the hell areyou?
The person doing his job.
He has a white lab coat on.
He's obviously like a doctor.
I don't think he had a whitelab.
I think it was like a nurse'suniform.
It was Scrubs.
He had Scrubs and a name tag on.
But she's walking out of thehospital and she's upset.

(11:18):
And Gerard is there, the guywith the billionaire.
And that's weird.
And so she immediately goes up,or she tries to avoid him at
first.
But then when they'reconfronted, uh, he tells her
that he knows the board of thehospital.
And she's like, Hey, could youpull some strengths and find out
whether or not this girl's okay?
And he's like, All right.
Um, which is, I mean, lucky forher, I guess.

(11:39):
Also, it seems like a complete180 from what he was like
earlier.
He didn't do it uh like withoutlike he didn't even know who she
was talking about at first,though, even though the
explosion was the daybeforehand.
He had no idea what was goingon, he was up in his own head.
Um, again, that makes a littlebit more sense later.
She goes home, and I thinkthat's where she gets the one
bit of evidence which actuallymakes sense why she would follow

(12:00):
up on it, which is the fact thatshe notices the paper's picture
is photoshopped, and it's thesame one of the police taking
out Dinah's uh body to like goto the hospital, and that they'd
just taken the kid out of thepicture.
And it's weird.
Like, why would they choose thatimage out of all of them?
So she goes to the police uh andshe's she asks uh once again,

(12:23):
with all the entitlement in theworld, to know about the act of
investigation and is surprisedwhen they say, no, this thing
has been flagged, it'srestricted, you're not allowed
to know.
Now, I don't know howinvestigations entirely go in
Britain, but I do know, or inthe UK, but like I do know that
they don't just open it up tothe public completely.
You cannot just walk in,especially if you are somewhat

(12:45):
in the vicinity of the locationof what when it what happened,
to finding out where the policeare thinking about this.

SPEAKER_01 (12:52):
That's usually why they have the barricades up,
yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (12:55):
Right.
I I that's more the location ofthe actual crime scene.
I'm talking about where she wentdirectly to the police station
and she's like, let me see thefile.
No, give me access to the file.
And they say, No, we can't dothat.
And she was surprised, she'sshocked.
So she goes from there.
She does tell them about thePhotoshop, they don't seem to
care.
Uh, she goes to the detectiveagency, and that's where we get

(13:17):
the Odyssey of Joe Silverman,played by Adam Godley.
And then we also meet at thattime his wife slash ex-wife,
because they have a fraudulentrelationship or a weird
relationship going on.
Zoe.
Zoe spelled like Zoe Kravitz,that's her name.

SPEAKER_01 (13:31):
And that's what the series is, because there's been
four books uh written aboutthem, Zoe Bomb series.

SPEAKER_00 (13:36):
And she's like butcher cosplay, you know, from
the boys, she always has thetrench coat on, she's got the
cut uh hair like he does, andshe's like rough around the
edges.
It's a two-headed privatedetective business.
She's the bad cop, he's the goodcop.
And you could not have made acharacter more scripted to die
than Adam Godfrey is in thisepisode.
And that was infuriating towatch because the second he was

(13:58):
introduced, and the secondyou've seen the cover of Down
Cemetery Road, you know this guydoes not have a short lifespan.
You know that they're going touse him as the motivating factor
for Zoe to jump into theinvestigation.
And so every scene that he gets,they make him so sad and so like
he has the heart of gold.
He's down on his luck.
He'll take no every case, big orsmall.

(14:19):
He'll find your cat for you.
The guy just wants to do good.
And then he follows up on hisfirst lead, and what a surprise
by the end of the episode, he'sdead.

SPEAKER_01 (14:27):
He's yeah, he's supposed to be kind of like the
the nicest character, you know,the the the friendliest
character.

SPEAKER_00 (14:35):
It was just upsetting because I enjoyed his
scenes.
I he was funny.
You were talking about comedy,and and that's definitely where
he comes from.
But then I couldn't enjoy itbecause, like, unless the show
had pulled, subverted myexpectations, and at the end he
had turned up to be alive and hewas going to help them with the
case.
There was no way I was going tobe okay with this because the
way that Zoe treated him was somean that it was clear that she

(14:59):
was going to be using that guiltfor later on.
It was like they were juststacking it up for her.

SPEAKER_01 (15:04):
Well, he's also supposed to be the one that's
figuring out the most, right?
And it seems like a cop-outwhenever someone is figuring out
almost like everything about themystery.

SPEAKER_00 (15:11):
His lead is he goes, he believes her, he goes to meet
the nurse, and he finds out thatnot only is this girl there, but
she's also being checked outthat night.
So a little backstory, though,is that Gerard did contact Sarah
and say, Hey, I talked to theboard, and the board told me
that she's safe and that she'sgonna be there a few days, and

(15:32):
then social services or whoeveris gonna take her and she's
gonna be fine.
And then so she thinks Gerardlies when she's contacted by uh
uh Joe and told that he hasmilked this information out that
says that she's actually leavingtonight.
Now, what we know as theaudience, because we keep on
getting flashes to it, is thatthere are several agencies

(15:53):
involved here.
There's the top Tibby Topagencies, agency that we don't
see.
Then there's this guy named Ithink C, and then he is in
control of this other guy whosename is like Malik, and then
that guy is control of twoagents named like Amos and um
Axel.

SPEAKER_01 (16:11):
Yeah, so you're saying that C is second in
command, it's kind of layeredbasically, and but the top piece
He says, according to Wikipedia,that this is a Ministry of
Defense operation.

SPEAKER_00 (16:20):
High and that C is the high-ranking member, but C,
who is intimidating, but alsojust like supposed to be comic
relief, he has his higher-upswho breathe down his necks.
We just haven't seen them yet.
I thought that Hamza wassupposed to be the comic relief
because RogerEber.com talkedabout different type of comic
relief.
Like Hamza is just like he's outof his element, he pretends to

(16:42):
know what he's doing, but youcan tell he's kind of just
flying by the wire of like,okay, go kill this person for
me, please.
While C is just like, do I needto get rid of you, Hamza?
I can find a new Hamza.
Um, and so there's someone aboveC, we don't never meet them.
There's Hamza, and then Hamza'sin charge of this like pair of
brothers named Amos and Axel.

(17:04):
And uh so when Sarah's beingfollowed, we think that Curtis
uh from Misfit is down angle.

SPEAKER_01 (17:12):
That's his name in the show.

SPEAKER_00 (17:13):
All right, so getting back to the point, she
finds out that the kid's beingdischarged, she runs to the
hospital.
She gets there as soon as shepossibly can, and she notices
that she's being followed.
And what does she do?
She's she needs to find thiskid, so she pulls the fire alarm
to a hospital, causing all thepatients and the doctors to run
out of the hospital.
And she sees the kid that shethinks is the one that she, the

(17:37):
butterfly girl, Dinah, beingloaded up into a car and driven
away.
She's prevented to getting tothat kid because the person
who's been following her gets inher way.
And then she sees Gerard of allpeople, and she confronts Girard
and she's like, You lied to me.

SPEAKER_01 (17:50):
And then Gerard is just always there.

SPEAKER_00 (17:52):
Gerard's like, you know what?
I'll just tell you.
My wife had a miscarriage, andthat's why I've been at the
hospital the whole time.
Get off my back.
And so then she's like, Oh, I'ma dick.
And so she goes home.
She should spend the secondepisode in the uh hospital not
in the hospital in the policedepartment because she just
pulled a fire alarm with therebeing no fire.

SPEAKER_01 (18:14):
Is she supposed to be a likable character?
Because it seems like everythingshe does, she's just like doing
the opposite of, but it seemslike the show is making it.

SPEAKER_00 (18:23):
She has nothing to actually feel suspicious for
except for the fact that youhave the photoshopped picture,
which is odd, especially becausethis agency is the one that
chose to roll out that photo.
Like, they obviously have theirhooks in the police and the
reporting and everything aboutit.
So, like, why wouldn't they justchoose another photo?

(18:46):
Is beyond me.
The in the by the secondepisode, it does become a little
bit more obvious why she shouldbe looking into it, primarily
because when she goes to talk tothe detective about what she
just learned, she just saw thiskid being sped off in a vehicle.
She finds Joe dead.
Um, and then she screams.
And for some reason, the cameradecides to pan straight towards

(19:08):
her face in the slow motion.
It was kind of funny.

SPEAKER_01 (19:10):
Yeah, weirdest slow mo I've seen.

SPEAKER_00 (19:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's where they leave youoff in the first episode.
And in the second episode, whichis called The Kind of Grief,
they make up a little bit forthe show's faults.
And this is what I mean by that.
Sarah has a come to Jesus momentwhere she starts thinking
rationally because she'sconfronted with the reality that
she wasn't looking for the rightkid.

(19:32):
She runs into the mom and thedaughter that she should that
she had this connection with inthe first episode and finds out
that that's not actually Dinah.
So this she's been looking forthe wrong girl the whole time.
This causes her to spiral a bit,and it should, because she has
been acting crazy.
And so, because of that, shedoes the only logical thing and

(19:52):
she tries to jump off the Oxfordbuilding.
What?
Yeah, she tries to kill herself.
What happened is apparentlyshe's been depressed in the
past.
Something about like growingolder as a genius has made her
very like sad.
Um, at one point she had abright future ahead of her, and
now she just considers itwasted.
And so, who's there to stop heron the top of the tower?

(20:13):
She'd done it once before.
I'm going to she was she did sheactually like succeed in jumping
off?
I think she had jumped off onetime before, and that's why like
she is where she is.
That's why she's a little bit ofa depressed person.

SPEAKER_01 (20:24):
I'm I'm gonna guess it was Gerard that was at the
top of the Oxford.

SPEAKER_00 (20:28):
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
This is where Zoe starts havingher character.
And so Zoe will stop at nothingat this point to find out why
Joe is dead.
Because uh, thank you, by theway, for showing us the affair
between Zoe.
Just to the extra nail in Joe'scoff coffin once he's dead, is a
backlash scene to show that shewas cheating on him as well as
everything else, which he sortof already knew, but like we

(20:50):
needed to see the scene.

SPEAKER_01 (20:51):
It's very strange to me because I know that Emma
Thompson said that she agreed tothe rule because she loves the
book.
Uh she, yeah, she had alreadyread the book, but it's just the
preamble to the book.
I didn't actually read itmyself, but I listened to the
first She also said thatoftentimes uh the man who wrote
it, Mick Heron, he passes theBeckdill test.
So that's that's the reason whyshe accepted the role.

(21:13):
So it's strange that like allthis stuff is kind of not.

SPEAKER_00 (21:16):
Well, no, it's her character is the epitome of I
don't give a crap of what anyman says to me.
Like she didn't care that shewas cheating on on Joe.
She already felt like he wasjust this weak-willed dude who
wouldn't pay his bills, had toomuch of a good heart.
And so like she is Butcher, butjust a girl version of Butcher,
um, as far as just her attitude.

(21:36):
So she approaches Dinah aftertalking to Dinah's, sorry, not
Dinah.
She approaches Sarah aftertalking to Sarah's old teacher,
finding out kind of herpsychology.
And also she learns that uh thatgas explosion that uh Sarah is
so suspicious about couldn'tpossibly have been a gas
explosion because they turnedoff the gas to that block like a
year or two beforehand.

(21:57):
And she spoke to a neighborabout that.
This is just going back to howcrazy this agency is at not
doing a good job.
They decide the best way todisappear, these two people or
Dinah, is to fake a gasexplosion, take her to a
hospital that's like local andeverybody can find, then speed

(22:17):
her off in the most suspiciousmeans, kill the one detective
who's looking into it.
Like they couldn't be makingmore missteps if like the
breadcrumbs they're leavingbehind are mountains.

SPEAKER_01 (22:28):
So that's why I feel like it's like if Moriarty was
leaving this like giant thing.

SPEAKER_00 (22:33):
They want to get caught at this point.
Like, had they just donesomething normal, don't kill the
detective, just treat the lady,even approach uh a uh Sarah with
a logical like explanation.
It's not until episode two thatone of the goons, Amos, who's in
this fancy uh uh dress, uh likehe he he likes to perform in a
suit.

(22:53):
He's one of the two brothers,and he approaches and he says,
Stop looking into this, I'm apoliceman.
And she's like, fine.
Uh obviously that doesn't stickaround.
Like she then jumps back intothe plot.
But but yeah, Zoe is now part ofthe investigation.
So it's Zoe and Sarah, andthey're hanging out, and uh and
where are we going from here?

SPEAKER_01 (23:12):
Well, let me let me ask, uh, because with like
episode one, especially now thatwe know that the person was not
Dinah, I think it's fair to saythe inciting incident was the
explosion.
But episode two No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 (23:22):
It's still the runaround because had she not
had that, she never would havelooked into it.
Had she not thought it was theother girl, she never would have
looked into it.

SPEAKER_01 (23:30):
But episode two is supposed to be kind of more
thriller territory where you'regetting the conspiracy.
And I'm saying, does the show doa good job of balancing this?
I know that you've already saidthat the agency is doing it.

SPEAKER_00 (23:40):
Episode two is where I realized that this is supposed
to be more of a comedy than I Ithought it was just pure drama
in the first episode.
By episode two, when you justsee the amount of times that
Malik is just playing thingsfast and loose, he's being like,
go ahead and kill her.
Like, I don't care, just get herout of my hair, like that type
of thing.
Then I realize, okay, this isplayed for laughs.

(24:01):
Now the thing is, we've seenCurtis from Misfits.
Yes, we've seen his characterfollowing her around.
He does not wear a suit, but helooks almost identical to Amos.
So we're like 90% sure thatthat's the brother until we're
not.
So what happens is she isfreaking out because she sees
that uh Curtis's character, Idon't know, he doesn't have a
name yet.

SPEAKER_01 (24:21):
It's Downey, that's what it is.

SPEAKER_00 (24:23):
Downey, but we haven't learned that yet.
But Downey has been followingher and broke into her flat.
And so she is freaking out.
She asked the wigwam uh couplebecause they were right outside,
they were going to bring hersome treats, if they could stay
with her.
The wife has to go pick up thekids, and so her husband Rufus
stays in and he's he's being anice guy.

(24:43):
He seems like Joe almost, likehe's just there to be agreeable
and stuff.
And then it takes me too long.
But the amount of times that wejust see Downey's character
following her and doing nothingbut kind of looking sad made me
a little bit suspicious that hehe's probably gonna be a good
guy, but I thought he was gonnaturn coat, like that he was the
bad guy originally, because helooks identical to Amos.

(25:06):
It wasn't until I was like, whatif he's just straight up not
Amos's brother?
They they cast them to lookalmost identical, like the twins
from Breaking Bad, yeah.
Um, or the cousins from BreakingBad.
And what if not, then who couldhe be?
And I was like, there's only oneother black guy in the cast, and
it's Rufus here.

(25:27):
Oh my god, they're gonna make itRufus.
And lo and behold, then Rufusgets up, he grabs some dental
floss, and he's like, I'm gonnafinish the job now.
So yeah, Rufus, the next doorneighbor, decided that the best
way of going about disappearingDinah was to blow up his
neighbor's house.
We saw that he was at the dinnerparty when this explosion took
place.
So that means he must haveplanted some form of bomb

(25:49):
earlier in the day.
Also, he must have like he saysthat he screwed up the way that
he killed the detective.
He goes on a full villainmonologue and he says, Yeah, I
left blood on the doorknob,shouldn't have done that.
And so he takes the dentalfossil and starts to ring it
around Sarah's neck.
She's screaming.
And guess who breaks inTerminator 2 style?
Because we thought he was thevillain to save the day.

(26:11):
But Downey, yeah, and he pointsa gun and we see the shot.
We don't know who he's shooting,but I'm guessing it's not Sarah.

SPEAKER_01 (26:16):
Um you don't see the fallout of it.
I know, I I knew about that.
I read that, like apparentlyDowney was supposed to be the
watcher, right?
Like, are you supposed to thinkthat he was?
And then it ended up being, likeyou said, he kind of uh he
wasn't even really bad in that.

SPEAKER_00 (26:29):
It's fair because of how much they cast the two, Amos
and Axel.
Like you would think that theywere it.
I think they even talk aboutthem like they're twins.
Um I they say the Cray brothersor the Crane brothers, and um
and and so yeah, you're led tobelieve one thing.
I think the twist is better thanin the first episode where
everybody knew that Adam Godleywas going to die.
Uh, that said, she should havebeen in jail for what she did at

(26:52):
the hospital.
Um, the this agency is soterrible, they are going about
disappearing someone in theworst fashion possible.
And there's no real reasongiven.
Uh, even when Malik goes over tocheck on Dina, because we see
Dinah in this episode and figureout like whether or not she's
being taken care of.
Uh, there's no real reason whythey did this.

(27:13):
Like, are they blackmailingsomeone?
Uh, it's it why did they have toget rid of their family?
Like, it doesn't make any sense.
And then thirdly, why hasn't shedumped her boyfriend?
She does not respect herboyfriend, and her boyfriend is
such a kiss-up, trying to get inGerard's or Gerald's good
graces.
At this point, I don't see liketheir romantic connection,

(27:34):
especially when he finds outthat she's been followed or
she's trying to like talk aboutthat.
They need to break up.
That's what I'm ultimately.

SPEAKER_01 (27:40):
Well, though, don't you think that they're trying to
show that the boyfriend is bad?
Like, she shouldn't be in thisrelationship if he doesn't care.

SPEAKER_00 (27:46):
But he's not he's not bad in the sense that uh
like he's doing anything evil,it's just like they do not seem
like they're on the same pagewith stuff.
Um, and so once I realized thatyou were not supposed to take
this as seriously as a drama, Iwas able to be not as nitpicky,
though I do still sound nitpickyon this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 (28:05):
But does the show's I uh before you get into that,
does the show's comedy undercutthe threat that it's trying to
pose?

SPEAKER_00 (28:12):
In fact, I I was I guess I was happier that like
because there's so many big plotholes.
At least now I understand thatthere's like a reason.
Like, once now that we have deadbodies stacking up and people
getting attacked, there's areason for Sarah to want to
continue her investigationefforts, unlike in the first
episode where it made no sense.
Now that the agency has causedso many problems for themselves,

(28:36):
it makes sense why they aregoing to be continually involved
with it.
Like it they had to create sucha crazy set of events for it to
be legit logical for them tocontinue forward with it.
I I could like the charactersmore, I guess, Zoe and and
Sarah, though, but it doesn'tfeel like they've been written
to be particularly fun to watchyet.

(28:57):
So I am waiting on that.
Overall, I would have to say itfalls more into the conspiracy
thriller Apple shows that arekind of forgettable to me.
I I don't really enjoy it.
I would give it a four out often.
I'm not impressed with it.
The second episode is betterthan the first.
So if you're counting on thattrajectory, maybe the next few
episodes will be even better.

SPEAKER_01 (29:17):
If you had to compare it to anything, because
I read an article that said LATimes are woman over 60
redefining action stardom, andthey bought it uh Helen Mirn in
1923, Jodie Foster in seasonfour of True Detective.
She was close to 60 at the time,but Sarah Lankinshire and Happy
Valley, and they were obviouslywriting this about Emma Thompson
as Zoe.

SPEAKER_00 (29:36):
Happy Valley was just rock solid writing.
Um the True Detective, the lastseason didn't get as good
reviews as some of the otherones have, right?
Um, and then what were the othertwo?

SPEAKER_01 (29:47):
1923.

SPEAKER_00 (29:48):
1923.
I think Halameir was great inMobland.
I think that uh she was insanelylike annoying in Mobland, but
also like a really good uhcharacter.
I I'm not feeling it with Zoeyet.
Like she really just kind ofrubbed me the wrong way with how
much she was just like we'resupposed to feel bad for her
when she goes to um Shiva uh forher late uh husband.

(30:10):
Um she feels like sort of aone-level character.
Like it by making her so rough,it's like she doesn't really
have layers.
She's she may be that ShrekOnion, but it doesn't feel like
it so far.

SPEAKER_01 (30:22):
Okay, so you gave it a four out of ten.
It has a 77% on Raw Tomatoes, a7.2 on IMDB.
Uh the Financial Times awardedit two out of five stars and
said, like Luther, the end ofthe fucking world and utopia.
Down Cemetery Road.

SPEAKER_00 (30:36):
Oh, the guy's from Utopia, though.
The Malik guy is from SweetTooth and Utopia, and he's been
in something else too.
Fool me once.

SPEAKER_01 (30:42):
I think that also Nathan, the guy who plays
Downey, I think he was in theBritish version of Utopia as
well.

SPEAKER_00 (30:48):
That's true.
He was, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (30:50):
Yeah, it was Like Luther, the end of the fucking
world, and Utopia.
Down Cemetery Road has the feelof a comic book adaptation in
that every dial is turned up,every point of tension is
exaggerated.

SPEAKER_00 (31:00):
Nah.
I mean, it's it is exaggerated.
Um, but like I just, yeah,motivations matter and they just
don't have them in the show.
I wonder how the book reads.
I wonder if it's agreeable ornot.
But it does kind of make mecurious.

SPEAKER_01 (31:12):
Uh I know that that um Mick Heron he said that he
wasn't in charge really ofdevelopment in terms of like
dialogue and but he was but hewas in there in terms of like um
the writer's room because it waswritten in 2003, so they had to
like, you know, kind of with theinvention of smartphones and
everything.

SPEAKER_00 (31:30):
They did use smartphones, uh, for instance,
when they're filming outside theexplosion and when she's uh
yeah, looking at that.
Um, I guess I was wondering ifshe's not allowed to drive a car
because of like her accidentearlier, and and maybe that's
why she's on a bike the wholetime, but it it's it's kind of
goofy.
So, yeah, four out of ten forme.
I'm not gonna watch any more ofit.

(31:50):
Thanks for listening to us.
We'll see you in the nextepisode.
Hope you enjoyed this one.
Bye.

SPEAKER_01 (31:54):
Bye.