Slow Horses enters third season – and it’s better than ever
Welcome back, Slow Horses – the spy show that mixes good old MI5 tricks and tension with clever comedy and some of the best performances in an era where our best actors are available to us anywhere, anytime.
You know you’re in good hands when you get to season 3 of an excellent series, and it’s even better; when the script and the staging are familiar yet fresh; when you can almost anticipate what will happen next but are still surprised.
Welcome back, Slow Horses – the spy show that mixes good old MI5 tricks and tension with clever comedy and some of the best performances in an era where our best actors are available to us anywhere, anytime.
British espionage may be a worked-over genre but this show demonstrates why it’s so successful.
Slow Horses, based on a series of books by Mick Herron, launched in April last year with a six-parter; retuned in November for another; and on November 29 released the first two of series 3; with a fourth season not far behind. What’s not to love about a series that doesn’t leave you hanging about for a year waiting for the next season to drop?
An even better reason to check the show (which has been somewhat under the radar) is Gary Oldman in the lead role of Jackson Lamb, the washed-up spymaster ending his career in the less than illustrious London outpost nicknamed Slough House – Slough being the ends of the earth, don’t you know? Lamb’s unit comprises half a dozen “slow horses”, labelled as such by the real deal (but often hapless) spies over at headquarters, because they have messed up and are now in limbo (or is this Lamb’s purgatory?), required to atone for their sins by carrying out various levels of stupefyingly boring desk work.
The angle, surprise, surprise, is that they somehow wind up being at the centre of chilling espionage exercises, and that Lamb, surprise, surprise, turns out to be brilliant at the game.
Also brilliant is Oldman, playing a dissolute character in regulation trench coat who takes a desultory wash in the office hand basin of a morning; gorges on vindaloo and kebabs day and night; but has just enough empathy and nous to make him credible. The performance reminds one of the effort put in over 10 years in the American version of Shameless by another talented actor, William H. Macy. His role as the dreadful alcoholic, selfish father of that household of kids trying to survive without any help from him was memorable. It’s a good, sustained performance of an unsympathetic character but Oldman’s turn, helped by a more nuanced script, is better still.
He is backed by a well-cast ensemble that includes Kristin Scott Thomas as the rather more predictable and ambitious no. 2 at MI5 conniving her way to “first desk” (director-general) with a little help from a political prat called Peter Judd (Samuel West). These two, like just about all the players, look as if they’re having a ball but exercise just enough restraint to make us feel it’s all deadly serious.
All bases are covered in terms of characters, without it looking too manufactured. There’s the handsome, upper-class River Cartwright, played by Jack Lowden, who was such a hit in Dunkirk, and here manages a nice blend of pin-up boy and comic; there’s the older woman Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) for so long the helpmeet, now flexing her espionage muscle; there’s the younger crew ranging from insufferable tech nerd (Christopher Chung) to the gambling addict who still knows what he’s doing (Kadiff Kirwan) to Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar) who in season 3 is still recovering from the murder of her fellow slow horse and lover in the last season.
The direction and editing is sharp and other critics have noted the show’s high production values as it moves seamlessly from the squalor of London’s back streets; to the shiny glass and metal of the city; to the Cotswolds and scenes as verdant and reassuring as anything Midsomer Murders can deliver.
This ability to exploit and amplify the layered cliches of the spy thriller is what makes Slow Horses so delicious. There’s also a snakey theme song, Strange Game, by Mick Jagger and Daniel Pemberton: “You got to carry the blame/In this strange strange game/You’re out on a limb/Trying hard to get in/It’s a strange game.”
Sometimes, there’s a touch too much direct explanation of what’s going on in the complex storylines; sometimes events stretch credibility, but generally it’s a show that shows, rather than tells. And it’s pacy. Season 3 opens with the usual extended set up (in season 1 we saw Cartwright in a thrilling chase that turned out to be a training exercise but no less important fort that; in season 2, a superannuated spy pursues a stranger on foot, train and bus and ends up dead).
In season 3 we’re in Istanbul where in short order we are given sex, betrayal, a handover of secret documents by an embassy official, and an execution. Before you can say “dark ops” we’re back in London with the slow horses being their usual slow horses, or at least just for a moment. Lamb is undergoing his annual service medical check-up (“No need for that,” says the slightly horrified Harley St doctor as the spy, who looks and smells like a homeless person, starts to undress) while Louisa is throwing her one-night stand out of her flat and checking the diamond she apparently lifted in the final minutes of season 2; and Catherine – dear old, faithful Catherine – has been kidnapped after attending her local AA meeting. We’re only 20 minutes in and wallowing in the artistry of it all. Welcome back indeed.
The first of the Slow Horses novels was published in 2010. They were a slow burn for the writer Mick Herron who pursued a day job as a subeditor on a London legal journal, writing at night.
He told The Guardian a couple of years ago, that the concept of the Jackson Lamb books with their “cast of failures and dropouts” depended on his own “lack of fame and fortune”.
They’ve made him a small fortune and won him a cult following, helped along by the See-Saw Films series. This third season, written by Will Smith and directed by Saul Metzstein, can only add to the fervour.
Slow Horses is now screening on AppleTV+