The Stop Button

Down Cemetery Road (2025) s01e05 “Slow Dying” D: Sam Donovan. S: Emma Thompson, Ruth Wilson, Darren Boyd, Adeel Akhtar, Adam Godley, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Sinead Matthews. Sometimes bewildering (the quirky walking theme amid disintegrating flesh and child murder), sometimes bad (Wilson’s maybe, maybe not trigger warning backstory somehow equivalent to actual years of torture). Thompson’s great. Show’s terrible at suspense when someone isn’t in imminent danger, which presumably happens next episode at the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Not disappointing so much as dejecting. Humbug.

Down Cemetery Road (2025) s01e06 “Neglected Waters” D: Börkur Sigthorsson. S: Emma Thompson, Ruth Wilson, Adeel Akhtar, Darren Boyd. The show might just be bad is this episode’s thesis statement. It’s some ginned up suspense without any pay-off (just misanthropy and, maybe soon, an ingrained misogyny, which will be a flex and a half considering the assignment). Wilson finally gets a better episode than Thompson, but mostly because Thompson’s episode’s atrocious. Cheap thriller narrative devices abound.

Down Cemetery Road (2025) s01e07 “Lights Go Out” D: Börkur Sigthorsson. S: Emma Thompson, Ruth Wilson, Adeel Akhtar, Darren Boyd. Assuming the novel doesn’t rely on Black British men in black hooded jackets looking the same with “artful” lightning. We do finally get the explanation of the title (not worth the wait), and lots of deck chairs get moved for the finale. There may be a good 104-minute movie if you cut out the fluff. Also, maybe not.

Down Cemetery Road (2025) s01e08 “What Will Survive” D: Börkur Sigthorsson. S: Emma Thompson, Ruth Wilson. So, no, not a good show. One hopes the novel leans more into the hard-boiled detective stuff for the finish, too. Thompson and Wilson get squat this episode, which opens with another reset of the stakes. Maybe with some smart cutting (of whole subplots and characters) you could get an okay movie out of it. But probably not.

Pluribus (2025) s01e01 “We Is Us” D: Vince Gilligan. S: Rhea Seehorn, Miriam Shor. Great hour of entertainment but there’s no indication of the show. The first act is about a signal from outer space, then lead Seehorn takes over. We get a little about her life as a successful but artistically bereft fantasy pirate romance author (which may be filler). Until she’s in a nightmare, just trying to get safe. We’ll see.

Pluribus (2025) s01e02 “Pirate Lady” D: Vince Gilligan. S: Rhea Seehorn, Karolina Wydra. Possibly over-full (and rushed) episode establishes Seehorn’s place in the new world, including why she’s the normie who gets the TV show. The utopian hive mind stuff would work better if there weren’t the beyond ostentatious “wealth porn” angle, which seems anti-environmental. The episode’s third act and jingoism is a little off, too. Big questions, TV answers.

Pluribus (2025) s01e03 “Grenade” D: Gordon Smith. S: Rhea Seehorn, Karolina Wydra. Will any of the happy people ever need to act with more depth than a customer service representative training video? Might not be worth watching the show, which continues to be competently executed basic television. But making Seehorn the whole show and not giving her anything more than a movie trailer’s worth of emotional content is getting tedious.