The Studio and Severance might have swept up all the awards at the Emmys recently, but if there’s one series worth subscribing to Apple TV+ for I reckon there’s a good case to be made for Slow Horses, which returns for a fifth series on 24th September.
The dawdling nags of the title are a team of demoted MI5 agents, quietly exiled to a messy office above a greasy spoon cafe on the edge of London’s Square Mile, where they continue to toil away on the margins of the British intelligence service. If James Bond is the MVP of spying, this lot aren’t even warming the bench.
The ‘M’ in this setup is Jackson Lamb, an almost unrecognisable Gary Oldman who lives off takeaways and Jaffa Cakes, smokes like the tyres on one of 007’s Aston Martins, and isn’t afraid to let his backside do the talking.
Slow Horses is based on Mick Herron’s 'Slough House' series of books, but it was created for TV by Will Smith (no, not that one), a former stand-up comedian who was also one of the writers on The Thick of It and Veep. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that Lamb’s mouth is also capable of producing some pretty ripe material.
His withering put-downs ("Bringing you up to speed is like trying to explain Norway to a dog") and unique words of wisdom (“The grapevine says a lot of things, but it’s mostly the wine talking”) are not quite as iconic as Malcolm Tucker’s, but it’s much more entertaining than the cringeworthy stuff James Bond comes out with.
While Lamb might get all the best lines, the rest of the Horses are not without a zinger or two of their own. River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), whose blunder on a training exercise at the start of series one sets the whole show up, is rarely without a witty riposte, and computer whizz Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) seems to be on the receiving end of a verbal evisceration from Shirley Dander (Aimée-Ffion Edwards) at least once an episode.
Lamb’s charges have all ended up at Slough House through some sort of professional or personal misdemeanour, whether that’s a cock-up like Cartwright’s or being slightly too familiar with the inside of a bookies, and that’s a big part of what makes Slow Horses so watchable.
The spies we’re used to seeing on screen are essentially superheroes in suits, whereas the leader of the Slow Horses can barely even dress himself. You’d have to worry about anyone who genuinely sees themself in Jackson Lamb, but it’s certainly more relatable than most other espionage shows.
That extends to the storylines, too. If The Park (MI5’s high-tech main headquarters) had its way the inhabitants of Slough House would spend their days chained to their desks keeping out of trouble, but that wouldn’t make very entertaining TV, so each series is packed with terror plots, stolen classified files and fake identities.
That might sound like the kind of stuff you’ve watched a hundred times before, but it’s all done with refreshing restraint. The writers have resisted the urge to chase bigger but less believable set pieces as the show goes on, and, ironically, each episode has about as much fat on it as a prize-winning racehorse.
The new season is no different, with a mass shooting and a suspected assassination attempt on a member of Lamb’s team setting off a sequence of events that reaches far beyond the nicotine-stained walls of Slough House. And with tensions among the Horses running higher than ever there are plenty of opportunities for them to insult each other in amusingly creative ways.
Because this is Apple TV+ you also get 4K and Dolby Vision HDR as standard, so each episode looks pristine. Every wrinkle in Lamb’s clothes is visible and the Dolby Atmos audio will have the bullets pinging off your light fittings when a gun battle does break out. In the new series there’s a fight scene under a railway that should definitely give the height channels of the best sound systems something to think about.
At just six episodes per series Slow Horses never outstays its welcome either, although I can’t promise it won’t leave you wanting more. Fortunately, it’s already been recommissioned for a sixth and seventh series, although with Will Smith not returning as showrunner there’s no guarantee it’ll be able to maintain its high standards.
For now, though, there’s still plenty to sink your teeth into – and that’s before you've even opened the Jaffa Cakes.
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