I always forget how good Emma Thompson is. That is partly because she tends to work in film rather than television and I last made it to the cinema in the mid-90s. It is also partly because she is always so … how can I put this? … so Emma Thompson in all her interviews and award speeches that I can’t envisage her putting herself away enough for Proper Acting.
But of course she can – and does as the private investigator Zoë Boehm, a woman of flint and diamond, in the new eight-part thriller Down Cemetery Road, Morwenna Banks’ adaptation of Mick Herron’s debut novel of the same name. Herron has since become known for Slow Horses, the series about the busted spies in Slough House pushing paper under the world-wearied eye of Jackson Lamb, ever hoping to get back in the game. Gary Oldman, who plays Lamb, has become a sort of niche national treasure for his portrayal of the beleaguered antihero who we like to think lives in all of us. I hope the same happens with Thompson/Boehm, because both are magnificent. Boehm is a role model for ladies everywhere, but especially those hampered by a lack of innate cynicism or by a people-pleasing nature (or early training). Look at Boehm and learn. Observe the barren wasteland in which she stands, the field of fucks she has left to give. “I don’t drink prosecco and I don’t bond emotionally,” she tells a new client and one of the show’s many delights is that this remains almost entirely true.
