Summary
Down Cemetery Road ups the stakes in “Slow Dying”, delivering less comedy as the scale of the conspiracy starts to be understood.
Streaming’s a mixed bag, isn’t it? While Netflix is over here releasing Marine Corps recruitment propaganda in the guise of documentaries, Apple TV+ is teasing out a show in which the British government tested chemical weapons on its own troops. And while Down Cemetery Road is fictional, a fun Mick Herron thriller that is in large part a comedy, I think we all know which is closer to the truth. And Episode 5 isn’t especially funny, by design. We’re a little bit past that point, and “Slow Dying” – a title redolent with decidedly unfunny energy – is a nice clarification that in the back half, things are getting serious.
Thanks to previous episodes, we’d more or less put the pieces together about what the Ministry of Defence is trying to cover up. But there’s a clarity here – glimpsed second-hand through horrific body-cam footage, and first-hand through Downey’s nightmares and sober recollections – that helps to establish the stakes. Downey’s on borrowed time, it seems, and he’s determined to use that time to rescue Dinah from her bumbling safe house security team, none of whom are especially sure about what they’re doing since Malik, who is continuing to lose control, isn’t telling them anything. He’s as much a pawn as anyone, and his inability to deal with the Amos wildcard essentially results in him being shut out completely here, which is bad news since his incompetence was the only thing giving Downey and Sarah, not to mention Zoe, time to catch up.
Zoe remains in London, conducting her own investigation, not at all dissuaded by the threatening “Stop” message daubed on her window. She has precious few allies, but one of them, Wayne, is genuinely useful. I did speculate that we’d see him again after he revealed his hacking credentials, and I was right. Zoe tasks him with hacking into the computer she stole from Isaac Wright’s office, which reveals in more detail what the British troops in Afghanistan were subjected to in the name of chemical weapons research.
Given the scale of these revelations, it’s quite remarkable that C trusted Malik to deal with the cover-up in the first place. He falls for Amos’s fake text confirming that the hit he ordered was successful, and then gets blindsided by Zoe while trying to strong-arm Joe’s mother into not asking questions about what happened to his body. His half-hearted threats of more dangerous-looking messengers turning up aren’t taken even halfway seriously, which can’t be good for his ego, but then again, his ego is the least of his problems at this point.
His biggest problem in Down Cemetery Road Episode 5 is Amos. He’s a big problem for everyone, except perhaps C, since to him, he might represent a solution. Their goals are aligned. Amos wants Downey dead as revenge for his killing Rufus; C wants the whole matter buried. He’s willing – or claims to be willing, which isn’t the same thing – to give Amos whatever he wants to make the problem disappear. It’s an uneasy alliance, but it feels like a more dangerous one than having Malik as the middleman. Amos knows exactly where Dinah is, and thus where Downey is heading: the facility in Scotland where he and his battalion were “treated” – read: experimented on – after they were blanketed in the searing snow of chemical weapons.
Downey and Dinah’s father were the only ones who escaped that facility when it became obvious that none of them were intended to leave alive. They were both in Dinah’s house, both targets of the bomb that kick-started the season, but an argument saved Downey’s life, which is why he now feels so responsible for Dinah. He even has a vague plan for her future – to leave her with his sister, who believed he was dead. Downey and Sarah’s relationship has a tender quality to it in “Slow Dying” that comes from Sarah helping him to navigate the past he thought he wouldn’t have to deal with. Their scenes together are brief, as is their visit to Downey’s sister, but they’re effective inclusions.
Zoe uncovers the Scotland location for herself, through Isaac, whom she leans on to confess the truth after discovering the kompromat on his laptop. She’s too late to “save” him, though, not that he deserves it, since Amos pays him a visit on C’s instructions before heading to Scotland. Zoe witnesses the murder and continues to follow Amos to his next destination, but remember, we’re not dealing with Malik now. Amos knows he’s being followed, and it’s with his realisation of this that Down Cemetery Road Episode 5 ends. Things aren’t looking good for Zoe.
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