-an OD of Toughts-

Every now and then, a television show comes along that grabs you by the eyeballs and refuses to let go. Down Cemetery Road is that show. It’s smart, it’s moody, and it’s got enough twists to make a corkscrew dizzy. Based on Mick Herron’s novel, yes, the bloke behind Slow Horses, the show about alcoholic spies and terrible life choices, Down Cemetery Road swaps espionage for suburban secrets. There’s a house explosion, a missing girl, and more lies per minute than a politician in election season. Ruth Wilson plays Sarah Tucker, a woman whose curiosity is roughly the size of Jupiter. Emma Thompson, meanwhile, plays Zoë Boehm, a private investigator with the kind of haunted stare that suggests she’s seen things no one should ever Google. Together, they wander around Oxford digging up enough dirt to fill a quarry. And it’s brilliant. The writing is sharp, the acting flawless, and the whole thing hums with that slow, creeping dread the British do so well, the sort that makes you feel sli...

   There I was, scrolling through Prime Video, expecting something light and easy for the evening. Maybe a cheerful rom-com, a bit of nonsense, something with a talking dog. Instead, I ended up watching The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, which is basically ten hours of small-town America losing its collective mind in glorious high definition. It begins innocently enough. A quiet town by the sea. Birds chirping. Everyone pretending to be normal. Then, within minutes, someone digs up the body of a teenage girl in the garden of a famous writer, and suddenly the whole place makes Broadchurch look like The Teletubbies. Patrick Dempsey, who we last saw charming nurses and melting hearts in Grey’s Anatomy, now plays Harry Quebert, a tortured author who wrote one great novel and has spent the rest of his life staring moodily at the ocean, probably waiting for inspiration or a decent sandwich. He’s accused of murdering a fifteen-year-old girl who was his so-called muse, which is...