Slow Horses Moves Fast

The Apple TV+ series Slow Horses has been running for four seasons, but its audience has grown apace, and at least two more seasons are planned (this review contains spoilers). Based on the mordantly funny spy novels of British writer Mick Herron, the show takes its title from a pun on “Slough House,” a fictional dumping ground for defrocked employees of MI5, the British domestic counterintelligence and security agency. In contrast to MI5’s grand headquarters, Herron describes Slough House as a “flaked and grimy” edifice in a trendy but funky section of Central London. And though most of its denizens are young, it is not a place of second chances. In Herron’s words, it is “an administrative oubliette where, alongside a pre-digital overflow of paperwork, a post-useful crew of misfits can be stored and left to gather dust.”

This is not the whole story, of course. The misfits may be slow horses, but their boss is a different beast. Grouchy, unshaven, foulmouthed Jackson Lamb, with his paunch, his stringy grey hair, and his assorted bad habits (everything your doctor warns against), is, in Herron’s phrase, “a ringer . . . for Jack Falstaff.” Played brilliantly by Gary Oldman, Jackson is not as lovable as Shakespeare’s famous Sir John Falstaff, but there is something perversely appealing about his continual strafing of friend and foe with insults, farts, clouds of cigarette smoke, and other offenses. The only person he spares (sometimes) is Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves), his long-suffering office manager whose past is mysteriously bound up with his.

Jackson’s calculated vulgarity and the connection between him and Catherine are highlighted in season 1, episode 4. For reasons I will spare the reader, Jackson and Catherine are being framed by MI5’s second-in-command, Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), for a betrayal of which they are innocent. Under arrest and riding in a car with an arrogant MI5 overlord and a pair of MI5 security officers (called “Dogs”), Jackson starts sneezing into the air and, while using his fingers to wipe his nose, offers a trenchant account of Taverner’s motives.

When his sneezing has sufficiently discomfited the Dogs, Jackson asks Catherine if she has a tissue in her purse. After a bit of rummaging and an exchange of meaningful glances, she pulls out a heavy-duty service pistol and expertly aims it at one of the Dogs, thereby motivating the captors to exit the car and allow their captives to drive it away.

Every Falstaff needs a Prince Hal, and while Shakespeare’s history plays are hardly the model for Slow Horses, there is a hint of Prince Hal in River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), the grandson of a Cold War MI5 grandee, David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce). Busted to Slough House for a mistake caused by the treachery of the same arrogant overlord who arrested Jackson and Catherine, River is the golden boy whose bloodlines and talent are the special target of Jackson’s barbs — and, over time, the object of his grudging affection.

The depth of character in Slow Horses is remarkable, given that every episode is loaded with fast-paced action and heart-stopping suspense. This is doubtless because the senior writer, Will Smith, is a British comedian with an excellent sense of timing. (When accepting the 2024 Emmy Award, he quipped to the Hollywood audience, “Relax. Despite my name, I come in peace.”) In a recent interview, Smith noted that each season has only six episodes because the plots of Herron’s novels unfold over one to three days, and anything longer would invite the American vice of padding series with “flashbacks,” “filler,” and “bloat.”

Smith also noted that the action’s swift hare is offset by Jackson’s unhurried tortoise. For example, in season 3, episode 6, Diana Taverner hires a private security firm to carry out another of what Jackson calls her “arse-covering” operations. Things go awry, and Jackson must rescue Catherine from a safe house being stormed by the Dogs. As usual, the heavily armed muscle is made to look slightly ridiculous, while the “wily old f***er” (as one Dog describes Jackson) is shown calmly booby-trapping the house with a roll of tape, a small incendiary device, a long nail, a kitchen knife, a cylindric drink container, and (cleverest of all) a scattering of crunchy potato chips on the stairs.

Does Jackson care about his charges’ unhappiness at being in Slough House? No . . . and, well, yes. Curmudgeons of all ages will appreciate the pep talk he gives at a desperate moment in season 1, episode 5. This is the first of several times when the group has had to scatter in order to elude the Dogs, and when they reassemble in a cemetery late at night, Jackson adopts a conciliatory tone, saying: “I don’t normally do these kinds of speeches, but this feels like a big moment, and if it all turns to sh**, I might not see any of you again.”

Then without missing a beat, he continues: “You’re f***ing useless, the lot of you. Working with you has been the lowest point of a disappointing career.” He walks away (accompanied by River), and one slow horse calls out, “Wait! What do we do?” Turning, Jackson replies, “Try not to get caught for as long as you can. My money’s on about 30 minutes. . . . Go lock yourselves in a toilet somewhere.”

Maybe it’s a British thing, but after this scene, the slow horses begin, erratically and irritably, to pull together. Which is not to suggest they will prevail. The Slow Horses theme song, written by Daniel Pemberton and sung by Mick Jagger, contains the following taunt:

The odds are against you,

The gods haven’t blessed you,

You better get back on the rails.

Drill down on the data,

Keep pushing the paper,

The damp’s dripping down on the walls.

It’s a million to one

There’s a place in the sun

To dance with the big boys again

Yet along with this sense of futility, there’s the Shakespearean theme alluded to earlier. River may not know his father, but like Prince Hal, he is descended from (MI5) royalty. Jackson’s past may be shrouded in mystery, but like Falstaff, he clearly has no son of his own. Season 4 ends with River’s grandfather losing his memory, and River, having sorted his family history, discovering that his father is a murderous monster. Thus, in the final and all but wordless scene, the golden boy and the dissolute mentor are left with each other.

There is a lot more to come, and because Herron is still writing the next novel, there is no way to compare the ending of Slow Horses with that of Shakespeare’s blockbuster English-history series. But I doubt River will reject Jackson as high-handedly as Prince Hal does Falstaff. After all, Prince Hal is about to become Henry V, “the star of England” and “the mirror of all Christian kings.” But to borrow a few words from one of Hal’s speeches, River has already seen past “the base contagious clouds” of Jackson’s bodily indiscretions to “the bright metal” of his mind. And if he can learn from that part of his mentor, he will become a very fast horse, indeed.