'Slow Horses' Is the Most Brutally Efficient Series on TV

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 28, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 28, 2023 |

It feels weird to say this about a spy series, but there’s nothing else like Slow Horses on right now. Slow Horses is what Citadel, The Recruit, FUBAR, The Night Agent and Jack Ryan desperately want to be, but nothing (save for maybe Tehran) even comes close to how incredibly good this series is.

Based on the Slough House series of novels by Mick Herron, Slow Horses is about a group of MI:5 rejects demoted to Slough House after a colossal fuck-up. The unit is operated by Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), who is rude, slovenly, and also brilliant. Oldman looks like he’s rolled up to set without having showered for three weeks, put on some holy socks, and started chain-smoking. There’s enough oil in that man’s hair to keep a lamp lit for all eight days of Hannukah.

Among those in his employ is Rivert Cartwright (Jack Lowden), an up-and-comer from MI:5 royalty who was bounced to Slough House after a mistake during a training exercise. There are many others, but I won’t mention any aside from the secretary, Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves), a recovering alcoholic whose husband was also involved in MI:5. I won’t mention them because part of what makes Slow Horses so good is the lack of plot armor. Save for Jackson Lamb (and maybe River Cartwright), anyone can die in this series, and several characters played by faces both familiar and not have been killed off (those who have seen all three seasons should go back and look at pictures of the season one cast and compare it to who is left).

Some of those deaths have been devastating, in large part because we find ourselves invested in all of them in short order — they are fuck-ups and lovable underdogs. Each season is built around a conspiracy, but they all boil down to Slough House saving the corrupt, incompetent, and evil MI:5 from itself. Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas ) begins the series as the deputy director-general of MI5 and head of operations. While ambitious and power-hungry, she always ends up as the better option. She and Jackson Lamb have a love-hate relationship (from an acting standpoint, it’s also hard to beat the two or three scenes Oldman and Scott Thomas have together each season).

But what makes Slow Horses work, aside from the great acting, brilliant characters, and intense storylines, is how efficient the series is. Each season has six episodes, but every episode counts. There is no filler. No bloat. Each season takes off in the first episode and does not let up until the final seconds of the sixth episode. The show does not linger, dawdle, meander, or dilly dally; it moves briskly, punctuated with violence and the occasional wry laugh. Slow Horses gets in, tells its story, and gets out, and by the end of each season, we feel bonded to the characters because it feels like we’ve all gone through something together.

Slow Horses is not on too many top ten lists this year because it’s the kind of show that falls between 11-15 on most lists, but if I’d never seen it and had a weekend ahead of me, I can’t think of three seasons of a show I’d enjoy watching more. I’d probably come out of the experience exhausted and depleted, but by god, I would be entertained and a little disgusted by Gary Oldman’s slovenliness — you can almost smell the man through our screens. I love Jackson Lamb, but he makes my stomach churn.

Also, because Slow Horse films their seasons back-to-back, it’s one of the few shows that can end a season with a trailer for the next. Here’s the teaser for season 4.

Season three of ‘Slow Horses’ has just wrapped on Apple TV+, and season four will air in 2024.