We Don't Need a New James Bond, We Have 'Slow Horses' River Cartwright

By Genevieve Burgess | TV | September 18, 2024 |

By Genevieve Burgess | TV | September 18, 2024 |

Since Daniel Craig made it clear that he absolutely not be returning as James Bond and will settle into retirement as Benoit Blanc, there’s been suggestions on who should take up the suit. As Andrew reported yesterday, even the cast that could still carry on with the franchise think it’s likely there’s a top to bottom reset coming. But do we really trust Amazon with that?

Here’s the thing, we don’t need a new James Bond because we have River Cartwright. He takes matters into his own hands! He chases down leads without reporting to his superiors! He’s not afraid to run headlong into certain danger without any hesitation and only a whiff of a plan! Get him a suit, a stiff drink, and a bass-heavy soundtrack and you’ve got Bond. Plus, whatever else you can say about Apple TV+ (mostly that they have no idea how to get people to watch their shows) they’ve invested enough money that almost everything they make LOOKS fantastic. Slow Horses looks just as slick as any spy thriller movie I’ve seen. I can’t really say the same for Amazon productions.

Now, it’s true that if you decide to accept River Cartwright as the next incarnation of Bond, you’ve got a Bond whose antics usually end up with him getting punched in the face and tied up by the people he’s trying to find. Admittedly, getting punched in the face and tied up means that he does find them. River is gutsy and can put together clues pretty well on the fly, but he’s ALWAYS on the fly. Slow Horses likes to show us the consequences of that type of thing, while Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb takes a beat or two to think through things and is typically several steps ahead of River from the safety of his disgusting office. Unlike the Bond movies, Slow Horses is also more of a true ensemble show where the other moving pieces around the Bond figure are as important if not more important than the man in the field. River is the one dashing off into danger, but he’d be dead without Jackson Lamb putting the pieces together and getting Louisa, Shirley, Marcus, Ho, and Catherine to organize around those pieces. Even inside the Park, you see not only Diana Taverner’s games (Kristin Scott Thomas also a solid option for a version of Bond who went management class) but Molly the queen of the records room, the Dogs who handle the dirty work, all the different roles that are one-offs in most Bond films but get their due in Slow Horses.

The spy thriller genre has been around so long that a lot of entries are straying into the world of self-parody where it feels like everyone is either a spy or spy-adjacent in a way that’s not really exciting anymore. Everyone knows how to shoot right away, everyone can slip into disguises easily, somehow they all have secret stashes of cash to access, everyone can drive a motorcycle backwards while making perfect headshots, it’s all pretty rote. Slow Horses feels grounded in a version of the real world, not unlike the first Jason Bourne movie. Sure, it’s a bunch of spy games, but the spies all look a bit dirty and tired and the real world seems more present. It’s based on a book series that was written with the internet and cell phones in mind. Also? It’s occasionally pretty funny. Let’s leave Bond in the past and ride a slow horse into the future.