How is ‘Slow Horses’ Connected to New Apple TV+ Mystery Show ‘Down Cemetery Road’?

Apple TV+‘s new mystery series Down Cemetery Road has something very important in common with its super popular spy thriller Slow Horses. Namely, both shows are based on books written by Mick Herron.

Mick Herron is a British writer beloved for his many mystery and spy thriller novels. His very first published book was none other than 2003’s Down Cemetery Road, the inspiration for the new Emma Thompson/Ruth Wilson Apple TV+ show. That book introduced the character of Zoë Boehm (Emma Thompson), a classically idiosyncratic private detective called to action when a strange case invites tragedy onto her doorstep. Local art historian Sarah Tucker (Ruth Wilson) hired Zoë’s husband/partner Joe Silvermann (Adam Godley) to investigation the disappearance of a little girl, the lone survivor of a freak explosion. What Joe, Sarah, and eventually Zoë discover, is a vast, dangerous conspiracy that begs to be unraveled.

Herron would go on to feature Zoë in three more novels — The Last Voice You Hear (2004), Why We Die (2006), and Smoke and Whispers (2009) — before shifting his focus to the Slough House series. The first Slough House book, Slow Horses, debuted in 2010 and soon became one of the best-loved contemporary spy series. Moreover, it served as the inspiration for Apple TV+’s award-winning series Slow Horses.

Given that both Down Cemetery Road and Slow Horses come from Mick Herron book series, you might be wondering if the two Apple shows are somehow connected. Is Down Cemetery Road set in the same universe as Slow Horses? Here’s what you need to know about Down Cemetery Road…

What is Down Cemetery Road About?

Down Cemetery Road is set in contemporary Oxford, where Sarah Tucker works as an art restorer and lives as a dissatisfied suburban wife. After an explosion takes down a nearby house, Sarah becomes obsessed with connecting with the disaster’s one survivor, a little girl named Dinah. When Sarah begins to notice a conspiracy to erase the girl’s existence, she calls upon local private investigator Joe Silvermann to help her investigation. Soon, a series of shocking twists and tragedies pulls Joe’s wife Zoë into the fray.

Given the conspiratorial nature of Down Cemetery Road‘s central mystery, it’s not hard to imagine Slow Horses‘s River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) getting involved. So is Down Cemetery Road connected to Slow Horses?

Is Down Cemetery Road Connected to Slow Horses?

Alas, Apple TV+ does not appear to be making an interconnected Mick Herron universe (yet). Down Cemetery Road is not directly connected to Slow Horses. Although they share a similar tone, the two stories don’t intersect.

This is also how it is in Mick Herron’s books. Some of his stories do feature references to Slow Horses characters, like recent standalone novel The Secret Hours. There are even published short story collections that feature stories about Zoë Boehm and Joe Silvermann in the same compilation as tales about Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb. However the characters themselves never overlap. Their individual stories are just collected in the same anthologies.

As far as we know, Down Cemetery Road and Slow Horses are not connected.