Apple TV’s “Down Cemetery Road” Gets Karpman’s Twisty Score

Laura Karpman’s – Laura Karpman explains how she built an “extremely” tone-switching score for Apple TV’s “Down Cemetery Road,” starting with unconventional percussion and shaping distinct musical voices for Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson’s characters—while working on an eight-e

On Apple TV’s “Down Cemetery Road. ” the plot doesn’t just move forward—it changes shape in front of you. Two women. played by Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson. team up to find a missing child and stumble into a complicated political conspiracy. The show is a mystery. but it’s also a rollercoaster: quirky comedy can slide into chilling horror. then land in something bittersweet.

Composer Laura Karpman was drawn to that exact problem of classification, and she says the music had to keep up with it. “It switches tone frequently and without warning,” Karpman told IndieWire, and that demanded a daring approach to scoring.

Karpman’s solution began at the ground level. She started with percussion—before she ever settled into the kind of orchestral sound that usually signals drama. “My wife Nora [Kroll-Rosenbaum] and I just started messing around in our recording booth with all of our instruments. ” Karpman said. “One is this Vietnamese wood block that makes a scraping sound. I started playing these things really slowly because I’m not a percussionist. and through the miracle of electronics we sped them up.”.

In the studio. she found a whole workshop of textures: “There were all these instruments around the studio. plus a drum set. and we started recording themes based on the quality of the instruments. There were woods, there were metals, there were felt — there were all these kinds of textures. And I just started playing grooves.”.

The result. Karpman said. wasn’t just a distinctive palette—it was a way to give each character a different musical “voice.” She described how percussion could function like a switchboard for emotion and intent. “In a tense scene, the percussion can drive the action, but it can also be funny,” she said. Under that percussive underbelly. she also built major orchestral themes—those typically reserved for emotional and dramatic material—so the score could move between moods without feeling like it’s changing channels.

That balance mattered even more because the series is built around a relationship that keeps echoing long after it starts. Much of the story hinges on Wilson’s character and a missing child. but Emma Thompson’s character also carries an obsession tied to Thompson’s husband—who vanishes from the series early on and “hangs over the show like a specter.” Karpman said she looked to a Hollywood classic with a similar fixation.

“I talked a lot about ‘Laura. ’” Karpman said. referencing Otto Preminger’s 1940s film noir about a detective obsessed with the woman whose murder he’s investigating. “It’s a classic Hollywood movie where the character is a sort of fantasy construction. so I played with those kinds of swirly circle-of-fifths things.”.

She also connected that 1940s feeling to the husband’s jazz obsession. “Part of the problem is that he goes away,” Karpman said. “He’s another ghost. So how do you create that connection to him and keep him going through Zoe’s pursuit, which is driven by her regrets and mourning of him?”

Karpman said she saw the show in pairs. and Zoe (Emma Thompson’s character) and her husband were one of them. “It was about finding a percussive sound for the two of them. but also a love theme that works in retrospect and drives her. She’s not just avenging his murder, she’s trying to make up for her own denial of him.”.

Thompson’s performance shaped how Karpman imagined the music’s job in the story. Karpman said Thompson being a heroine in her sixties was another factor that drew her in. and she praised the performance’s precision. “She’s funny, and she’s subtle,” Karpman said. “Music needs to not get in the way. but also to do its job. which is to take you to that place of humor. take you to that place of grief. take you to that place of anxiety. The opportunity to score a woman who’s my age doing heroic things, I loved it.”.

Karpman said Thompson’s action demanded real muscle from the score. “She deserved hardcore action music, which she got — there’s nothing wrong with that when the time calls for it.”

To pull off that breadth across “the show’s eight episodes. ” Karpman had to work under television timelines that don’t usually leave much room for experimentation. She said she couldn’t remember the exact length of the turnaround. but added that it “wasn’t that long. ” offering a ballpark of “Maybe a week or two max.”.

What helped, she said, was trust. “Luckily, the producers gave Karpman something she considered extremely valuable: room to fail.” Karpman said, “I tried a lot of really cool stuff. Some of it made it, some of it didn’t.”

In Karpman’s view, those constraints come with a creative upside. “I think it makes you bolder,” she said. “It makes you get out there and start recording. which I love.” She described improvising at the piano—then building outward from there. “I’d sit down and improvise something at the piano. and it’s very much a handmade score in the sense that my hands are literally playing a variety of musical instruments — as well as also hiring excellent musicians who came in.”.

Even the strange vocal moments in the score are connected to her directly. “That’s me singing and shrieking and scatting,” she said, describing how unusual vocal sounds in the music typically originate with the composer herself.

Karpman is prolific—she’s currently scoring Marvel’s “Marvel Zombies” (with Kroll-Rosenbaum) and an ESPN “30 for 30” documentary is on the way—but she’s careful about not repeating herself. She’s directing a short film about the lost instruments of the Palisades and Altadena fires. and she said that kind of work helps keep her fresh. “I have to say, giving myself a sonic break from episodic scoring, it’s really important,” Karpman said.

She concluded by arguing that the only way to keep getting surprising results is to step away from what comes easily. “Listen. it’s always good to work. and I’ve been so fortunate. but I’m also glad to have this time to clear my head out. ” she said. “You need to do that. because otherwise. there is the fear that you might fall into the things that come easily. You have to discipline yourself not to. To take the time to rejuvenate, to read, to write, to do other things — I think it’s really important.”.

“Down Cemetery Road” is currently streaming on Apple TV.

Down Cemetery Road Apple TV Laura Karpman Emma Thompson Ruth Wilson Morwenna Banks score interview IndieWire Laura film Otto Preminger jazz percussion Marvel Zombies 30 for 30