Slow Horses review: The all-action spies who prove the next 007 must be a female, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS
Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
The Murder of Lyn Dawson (Sky Crime)
She could be Jane Bond, or Jemima, or even Janine… but the next star to play Agent 007 will have to be a woman. If we leave it to men, the world is doomed.
Male spies are losers, according to the A-list spy drama comedy Slow Horses. You can hardly trust them to cross the road, let alone spot a double cross.
But every woman was born to be Bond – lightning-fast reactions, ruthless humor, super-charged sex drive. Kristin Scott Thomas as MI5 Chief Diana chews out a hapless male subordinate: “I want you to keep walking until you get to the sea, and when you get there, keep walking with your mouth open.”
Icy cop Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar) picks up an eager suitor for sex in a bar, telling him to sit in silence until she’s ready to drag him to bed. The next morning she kicks him out of her flat for daring to raid her fridge: the filthy idiot never guesses that that’s where she keeps her stash of diamonds.
Later, she stops a city council member from impounding a car by smashing his tow truck with a crowbar. The bully in the striking jacket is so weak from fear that he doesn’t even dare to call the police.
Male spies are losers, according to the A-list spy drama comedy Slow Horses. You can hardly trust them to cross the road, let alone spot a double cross
Now in its third series and based on Mick Herron’s best-selling novels, the tone shifts from action to slapstick and back again, so any tension is in danger of being undermined by cheap laughs (Image: Gary Oldman)
And little secret agent Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) punches a smart colleague so badly that he doesn’t regain consciousness for three scenes.
The contrast with the chaps couldn’t be more extreme. Some are thugs and knuckleheads, others are lustful perverts. But the rest is even worse than that.
Jack Lowden plays River Cartwright, a man as wet as his name. He can’t even carry a box of files downstairs without the bottom falling out.
His boss is Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), a sloppy drunk whose idea of personal hygiene is lathering himself with Fairy Liquid at the office sink with a cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.
Now in its third series and based on Mick Herron’s best-selling novels, the tone shifts from action to slapstick and back again, so that any tension is in danger of being undermined by cheap laughs.
In the first double set of episodes we see car chases, boat chases and heart-pounding races up escalators or through underground complexes – but these can end at any time when one spy crashes into the other and they both go flying.
It is saved from complete farce by a stylish portrayal of London, as a grimy city where contacts pass secrets to their handlers on the plastic chairs in East End laundrettes, and targets are bundled into cars by assassins under railway tunnels.
There’s a strong flavor of The Ipcress File, although a Slow Horses version would probably have starred Marti Caine, not Michael.
The surfer’s paradise of Sydney’s northern beaches in Australia is, in every sense, a world away from grimy London. They’re also the setting for one of the world’s most researched disappearances, thanks to the global success of a 2018 podcast called Teacher’s Pet.
That audio series led to the renewal of a murder hunt and ultimately to the conviction of former teacher Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife Lyn, whose body was never found (photo: Chris and Lyn with their eldest daughter)
The surfer’s paradise of Sydney’s northern beaches in Australia is, in every sense, a world away from grimy London.
They’re also the setting for one of the world’s most researched disappearances, thanks to the global success of a 2018 podcast called Teacher’s Pet.
That audio series led to the renewal of a murder hunt and ultimately the conviction of former teacher Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife Lyn, whose body was never found.
The Murder Of Lyn Dawson (Sky Crime) repeats the story at a brisk pace, galloping through the twists and leaving us little time to absorb the shocks that made the podcast so addictive.
It also obscures the identity of the 16-year-old babysitter who was seduced by Dawson – an odd decision considering her name was used throughout the podcast. For true crime fans, the snippets of the Dawson home movie are interesting, but this remake feels rather pointless.