Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Chris Revelle | TV | December 11, 2025
AppleTV’s Down Cemetery Road is a series about one woman’s quest to deliver a get-well card to a child in the hospital that improbably spins out into a shadowy conspiracy thriller that has her running for her life. By the time of the season one finale, the mystery has been solved, but not resolved. Dinah (Ivy Quoi) is the daughter of two soldiers who died during a cheeky little chemical weapon test that was being illegally carried out on a military unit. One of the surviving soldiers from the unit, Downey (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), was asked by Dinah’s late parents to look after her. British intelligence bigwig, C (Darren Boyd), was using Dinah as bait to lure Downey to them so that he could be killed and the weapon test would remain secret.
When Joe (Adam Godley) came too close to this truth, he was killed. When Sarah (Ruth Wilson) and Zoë (Emma Thompson) got involved, Hamza (Adeel Akhtar) activated the psychopath-for-hire Amos (Fehinti Balogun) to clean up the mess. Many twists and turns later, Sarah and Zoë have dodged death and capture to find Dinah at long last in a seaside village. With C commanding Hamza to “FINISH IT,” how will Sarah, Zoë, and Dinah get out of this one?
Though Down Cemetery Road leaned a bit heavily on coincidences to move its plot along this season, the great escape rests entirely on Sarah, Zoë, and Dinah’s grit and skills. Zoë’s face is all over the wanted posters that local police are handing out as Hamza arrives on the scene. The motley crew makes their initial escape on a bus. Just when they think they’ve gotten away, they notice that the bus is blowing through stops before it plows right into a cemetery.
Hamza corners the crew in a church, but he’s reluctant to kill a child like Dinah, so C calls Amos back in. There’s a standoff of sorts in which Hamza dithers about his predicament. As he insists he’s a good person despite all current appearances, Dinah finds a sharp fragment of metal, which Sarah passes along to Zoë. Amos tosses a grenade inside, and everyone scatters. Dinah, Sarah, and Zoë try to slip away, but eventually, Amos catches Zoë and beats the absolute hell out of her. Dinah manages to distract Hamza, which gives her and Sarah enough time to make it outside.
Hamza catches the pair anyway, and another stand-off ensues with Hamza and Sarah pointing guns at each other. They agree to lower their guns, but little does Hamza know that Sarah was using Downey’s gun, the one that’s full of plugs that will cause a backfire. When Hamza picks up the gun and tries to shoot Sarah, he blows off a very decent chunk of his hand and collapses, screaming. Meanwhile, Zoë escapes death once again when she stabs Amos in the eye with the metal shard while he holds her in a headlock. “F*cker’s dead,” she says as she exits the church.
On the train back to London, Sarah tells Zoë their absolutely insane misadventure counts as a “bonding moment” and shares her mini liquors. Zoë remains unsentimental as she reminds Sarah that before they get all mushy, she still has to figure out Joe’s funeral. Wayne (Joshua James) shares the secrets of the chemical weapon test and its cover-up across the globe. C swiftly exits the agency and heads for the private sector. His girlboss superior, Talia (Lydia Lenoard), goes on TV to deny any wrongdoing and commits to doing better in the future. The series’s first season ends with Ella (Sophia Brown) coming to pick up Dinah, who shares a sweet goodbye with Sarah. Zoë can’t be bothered with an emotional display, but something about her face indicates these events will haunt her more than she’d like to admit.
All in all, Down Cemetery Road was an action-packed and darkly funny conspiracy thriller that felt a little creaky at times, but was ultimately elevated by its cast. Emma Thompson as a stone-cold fox P.I. and Ruth Wilson as an arch, nosy person in over her head were a winning combination. I’m happy to say that the series has been renewed for a second season! There are more books in the Zoë Boehm series, so there’s be plenty of material to be adapted. I’m looking forward to what other nasty scandal will leak out of the British espionage community and bring Our Lady of Steely Hair another mystery to solve.
