There was no show I heard more about during the holidays Slow horses. As a TV editor, this is an anecdotal study that made me pay attention. Apparently everyone I spoke to, at holiday parties or on vacation, was enthralled by the British spy drama on Apple TV Plus; some people talked about the show more than their own children. Not one to be left out of the conversation, I dove into the third season. And there I found the best kind of Christmas present: a great TV season, and even more to watch as soon as I’m able.
The beauty of Slow horses – as anyone at any of these gatherings would tell you – is in how tightly constructed the show is. Based on the Slough House novels by Mick Herron, each season adapts one book into a compact six episodes, following the lives of the intelligence officers working in MI5’s “Slough House”. Not having seen the pilot where such names and designations could be explained, all I can tell you is that Slough House is something of a dumping ground for MI5 agents who have made a mess of it. Instead of being fired, they are demoted (condemned, damned) to dead-end work under the schlubby Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman).
But because each book and season are more or less self-contained, it’s quite easy to hop into Season 3 and pick up everything you need to know about Slough House and its horses – namely that they are in fact exceptional agents, even if they are a bit rougher than their brothers assigned elsewhere. In the middle you have River (Jack Lowden), the hapless spy who always tries to do the right thing, and whose career was stunted when he was accused of a mistake. But you also have Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar), who is both aggressive and effective, and Roddy (Christopher Chung), a skilled hacker whose main weakness seems to be a lack of motivation to do much more than harm when he gets to his druthers is left. No one is more deceptively skilled than Jackson, who plays Oldman with the perfect balance of rugged charm. He hates saying one kind thing, or even anything to appear to play the game, but he is always naughty.
As Season 3 picks up the dregs of some Season 2 baggage, it soon throws Lamb and his horses right into battle, kidnapping one of their own. In many other shows this might seem like a terrible time to jump on the bandwagon, but I didn’t feel that way Slow horses season 3. For all its newcomers resisting their Slough House designation, Slow horses is silky smooth, masterfully builds a spy thriller on the backs of strong characters and lets them take the story where it needs to go. Their relationships – with themselves, their colleagues and the MI5 organization – are self-evident, and the show wisely lets them take the reins.
And the result is pleasure – no small feat for a show I had no knowledge of, but had high hopes for. For whatever nonsense a six-episode British show can be, Slow horses deftly manages both solid comedy and serious drama, thanks to some dry humor surrounding the thriller stakes of spy life. Before I finished season 3, I was eager to revisit the previous two seasons. (And the sizzle reel from the actually completed season 4 at the end promises Hugo Weaving? Suffice it to say, I’ll now be the person at all the holiday gatherings — maybe even on Flag Day as the “before December 2024‘timeline is to be believed – effusively speaking Slow horses.)
The new year can often feel like a refresher: the kind of thing that makes you feel energized, ready to seize the day, exercise, get your life back on track, and perhaps at the same time feel overwhelmed and hopeful about everything you have going on. can do. The beauty (and terror) of January is that it is a blank slate, a wide open horizon, so full of possibilities that it feels endless (not derogatory, but sometimes derogatory). In this way, Slow horses season 3 is the perfect watch for now. It’s a show about a group of people who do their best, but at the same time are better at it and less sensible than they think. In this yawning month of January, when time seems liminal and the days feel shorter than they should be, there are many things you can do to fill that time. And I think you should probably fill some of it Slow horses. And just like the best resolutions, you can start where you feel good.
All three seasons of Slow horses are now streaming in full on Apple TV Plus. Season 4 will be released this year – hopefully sooner than we expect.