Slow Horses is an old-school British spy thriller done right
We spy with our little eyes this aces Apple TV Plus espionage drama starring Gary Oldman
TV Reviews Slow Horses
Slow Horses doesn’t reinvent the spy thriller because the spy thriller doesn’t need reinventing. Based on author Mick Herron’s award-winning crime novels, Apple TV Plus’ no-nonsense espionage drama—streaming two episodes on April 1, then weekly after that—gets back to basics with a six-episode kidnapping conspiracy that’s played straight and never lets up.
Instead of distracting with high-tech gadgets, CGI-laden chase sequences, and/or inexplicable cocktail parties, Slow Horses relies on tried-and-true tension-builders to get the job done. If you want an excellent slow-burn surveillance mystery delivered point-blank, this is it. It’s produced well, written better, and manages to maintain that one-two punch throughout.
Gary Oldman stars as Jackson Lamb, a cynical intelligence agent tasked with overseeing the ragtag crew of Slough House, an administrative purgatory where MI5 rejects are left to languish. Enter River Cartwright, played by an exquisitely cast Jack Lowden, who’s stuck there after botching a critical training mission that left dozens “dead” and hundreds more “injured.” This surprisingly public debacle is made only more embarrassing by the shadow of River’s retired spy grandfather David Cartwright (a sparingly used Jonathan Pryce) whose legendary track record precedes even his grandson’s famed failure.
Eight months into River’s so-called Slough House sentence, the discouraged protagonist is surrounded by fellow “Slow Horses”—the series’ title doubles as a derogatory nickname—and hating it. We’re haphazardly introduced to agents Sid Baker (Olivia Cooke), Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), Min Harper (Dustin Demri-Burns), Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar), and Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) in an understated premiere episode that could just as well set up a workplace comedy.
But when British Pakistani student/aspiring stand-up comic Hassan Ahmed (Antonio Aakeel) is abducted by a group of masked men who threaten to kill him on live television, Lamb, River, and a gaggle of other MI5 misfits find themselves ensnared in a political plot that positions the Underdogs/Slow Horses (Under-dorses? Slunder-hogs?) as have-to-be heroes. Even Lamb is pulled into the fray, reluctantly leading agents he doesn’t like or trust.
Where less secure spy sagas double-down or double-cross to make up for lacking heart, this show dares to trust that those along for the ride will be just as compelled by slow-broiling realism. The action swells and shrinks to match what “feels right” for the scenario, while never losing focus on the peripheral elements needed to bring a high-powered chess game into focus.
As such, we learn about the Slow Horses efforts just as we do the inner-workings of MI5’s more illustrious HQ, headed by the steely Diana Taverner (a terrifying and flawless Kristin Scott Thomas), and the fugitive criminals holding Hassan hostage.
The dramatic payoffs are stupendous, too. When you think a mission will go right, sure, there’s a chance it really will. When you fear an undeserving character might die, they very well may. Yet somehow, despite the occasional predictabilities, Slow Horses remains an edge-of-your-seat watch—with a killer finale that’s gut-wrenching start to end.
Of course, the performances best sell this style. Oldman, who at 64-years-old has won or been nominated for most major awards, shines exactly as you’d expect. Lowden plays the ambitious hero with similar success.
But the most notable performances come from Cooke, who dazzles much like she did in Bates Motel, and Brian Vernel, who plays one of the villainous tormentors and steals key scenes episode after episode. If he doesn’t quite match Oldman or Lowden, that’s only because he’s one of the bad guys. His henchmen, played by David Walmsley and Stephen Walters, provide ample support.
Slow Horses’s first season is chock full of characters, lines, and moments that will work brilliantly for fans of spy thrillers—not gritty spy thrillers, not action-packed spy thrillers, but straight-laced, classic, by-the-book ones. There are more episodes on the way (and more books to adapt). But for now, this conventional addition to an already crowded genre counts as a confirmed kill.
36 Comments
I’m excited about this show. But it’s a little weird for Foreman to treat high-tech gadgets, chase sequences, and cocktail parties as a “reinvention” of the spy thriller genre. The first Bond movie came out 60 years ago. My sense is this movie is more La Carre than Fleming, but I’m not sure either flavor of spy movie can be said to be a modern creation.
I don’t think that those two paragraphs were meant to relate to each other.
I think they pretty clearly were. The author says the spy thriller doesn’t need reinvention, and says Slow Horses “gets back to basics.” Then the next sentence is this: “Instead of distracting with high-tech gadgets, CGI-laden chase sequences, and/or inexplicable cocktail parties, Slow Horses relies on tried-and-true tension-builders to get the job done.” The author is creating a contrast between a “tried-and-true,” “back to basics” approach to the spy thriller, and features like chase sequences, gadgets, and cocktail parties. But I’m not sure how gadgets, cocktail parties, and elaborate chases aren’t “tried and true,” when audiences have been responding well to that formula for spy movies since the Kennedy administration.
I’m frankly amazed that the article described a new British spy thriller featuring Gary Oldman without mentioning Le Carre in general or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in particular.
I’m shocked as well (and perhaps pleasantly so). Jackson Lamb is a discount George Smiley, and I expected pretty much all of the reviews to draw this parallel.
That’s because the movie version of Tinker is best forgotten in favor of the far better Alec Guinness BBC series from the 1970s.
The movie version is pretty good, and Oldman is pretty good in it too. Doesn’t need to be forgotten. Even though, as you say, it’s only a shadow* of the Guiness version (or should that be the Richardson version?), which is incredible.*with the exception of the Christmas Party scene where the British spies gather to sing the Internationale. That bit was brilliant, and deserved comparison with the series. Firth was good too – he didn’t have either the menace or the humour of Richardson, but I thought he did a good job, in the time constraints, of making his psychological motivations more clear than in the original. And I’d have loved an entire miniseries with Hinds – though I’d also have loved more of that character in the original series (he was one of the most interesting but most underserved).
Oldman and the entire cast of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was incredible. And if you haven’t seen Darkest Hour, you will not believe that’s Gary Oldman playing Winston Churchill. They took some liberties with historical fact, but it’s a very compelling story.Hearing Churchill beg Roosevelt for help as Germany has the British troops trapped at Dunkirk, while we see the tragedy in Ukraine unfolding before our eyes is a reminder of what happens when we give autocrats an inch and they take an entire country.
Inexplicable cocktail parties always get me wondering how Bond (or whoever) consistently crashes them without anyone wondering who the hell they are, and why they’re there.
Hitchcock made ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ and ‘The 39 Steps’ in mid-1930’s and there were espionage films harking back to the silent era. This new-fangled James Bond fellow on the other hand is but a mere spring-chicken in comparison and to be honest, I think he’s a bit of a flash in the pan.
This show sounds like it was tailor made for me and yet this is the first I’m hearing of it. Do better, algorithm!
Agree. I’ve been watching Severance every week, why hasn’t Apple been running promos for this??!!!
My excitement for this is building. I originally wasn’t interested because Mick Herron isn’t my favorite spy writer (After so many early reviewers of his work cast him as the heir apparent to le Carre, I kept expecting le Carre level writing and kept being disappointed).* Then I heard Gary Oldman signed on, and thought maybe it had potential. Then I saw the teaser/trailer and it looked solid. Then the reviews came out today and the handful I’ve seen have generally been positive (B or 4/5 stars). So I’ll give it a go and re-up my Apple TV+ for a month or two. *This is an unfair standard and I recognize that. Nobody can be the second coming of le Carre. He is beyond compare, both as a writer and as an observer of human behavior. Sometimes I’ll read a sentence in a le Carre novel and I’ll just have to stop and marvel at the beauty of it. Then I’ll get jealous that I’ll never in my life write a single sentence that good.
You are dead on about le Carre but instead of being bummed out that you’ll never write like him, you should be happy that you have the taste and knowledge to enjoy his work.
He is without doubt my favorite writer ever. My copies of his novels are dog-eared and worn and covered in marginalia. I return to his work over and over again to marvel at it. From The Little Drummer Girl, describing agent runner Gadi: “Sometimes he no longer trusted himself. He would flex his muscles only to find that the cords of discipline did not tighten against him as they used to. He would set a straight course, only to look back and marvel at his degree or error. What am I dreaming of, he wondered, the fighting or the peace? He was too old for both. Too old to go on, too old to stop”From Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: “Nothing is worth the destruction of another human being. Somewhere the path of pain and betrayal must end. Until that happened, there was no future: there was only a continued slide into still more terrifying versions of the present…it was the treason, not the man, that belonged to the public domain.”I mean, damn. Just damn. (And if you haven’t read journalist/author Jeff Leen’s paean to le Carre after his passing in 2020, do yourself a favor and settle in with this. You won’t regret it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/12/30/my-two-weeks-with-john-le-carre/
thanks. I will check that out. Here’s a quote that I think sums up our mutual love of le Carre:“Appreciation
is a wonderful thing: it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as
well.” Voltaire
OK, I’m intrigued. Best jumping-on point for someone with limited exposure to spy/thriller novels?
Some people will say to start with The Spy who Came in from the Cold, but I would probably recommend Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Either is a good choice, honestly. If you start with Tinker, maybe read the wikipedia entry for the Cambridge spy ring before you start it so that you have an idea of the incident that le Carre is drawing from.The thing to keep in mind as you read le Carre is that you’re not supposed to have a full picture of what’s going on as you read. There will be spy jargon you don’t know or incidents that don’t come into focus until later in the narrative. If you can just go with that, most things become clear. Le Carre is a beautiful writer. Absolutely beautiful, with a wry wit that is often underappreciated. Tinker Tailor is the first of a trilogy called the Karla trilogy, the other two are The Honorable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People. All three are worthwhile. But if you don’t want to tackle all three Smiley novels in a row, here are the other (non-Smiley) novels that I recommend if you want some variety:The Little Drummer Girl: One of his best, the first novel that takes place outside of the Cold War context. After you read this, you can watch the excellent miniseries from a few years ago directed by Park Chan-wook (available to rent/buy on Amazon, or for free through AMC+ or Sundance channel). The Constant Gardener: Le Carre’s best novel from the post-Cold War era, about corruption and unethical drug trials that gets uncovered by a British diplomat in Kenya. The Night Manager: If le Carre wrote a Bond novel, this would be it. It’s a fun ride, and it also has a slick miniseries from a few years ago starring Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman and Hugh Laurie. Anyway, those are my recommendations. Happy reading!
I think I’d stick with The Spy Who Came in… as the starting point. LeCarre’s most urgent work was Cold War-era stuff (being a former spy himself) and it’s pretty much a perfect novel. Tinker Tailor is more of a mystery story. And I’d add Tailor of Panama to your must-read list. I also really liked A Legacy of Spies, which is a politically-motivated present day reevaluation of Cold War-era actions. I’m reading the posthumous Agent Running the Field right now (about 1/3 in and the story is very much still developing) and have the previously unpublished Silverview on deck.
I pretty much agree with TSWCIFTC being near perfect; I recommend Tinker Tailor first for a couple of reasons, chiefly because it seems to be the novel that first-time readers of le Carre prefer when I teach spy fiction. Students tend to get bogged down in the back third of TSWCIFTC, whereas Tinker picks up the pace. I think the ambivalent ending of Tinker encourages readers to explore more le Carre, whereas sometimes students are so downcast by the ending of TSWCIFTC that they don’t feel encouraged to read further into le Carre’s canon. I also think first-time readers often have a better time getting a handle on the machinations of the mole hunt (and the more direct UK vs. USSR conflict) in Tinker than the party politics and proxy battles fought in TSWCIFTC. Agent Running in the Field is, in my opinion, among le Carre’s weakest work, but A Legacy of Spies is excellent. I think The Little Drummer Girl maintains its urgency 40 years after publication, and its probably his first post-Cold War novel despite being written ten years before the end of the Cold War. In terms of psychological depth, I think it might be his most complete work. I also think A Most Wanted Man is underappreciated as a post-Cold War effort from le Carre. Its compact nature suits it—and the different kind of urgency felt in a post 9/11 world—very well.
That makes sense. I haven’t read Drummer Girl and will add it to the list. A Most Wanted Man is indeed excellent. I felt like he got in a bit of a rut after the end of the CW because he didn’t quite know what to write about, but then reeled off a string of strong works.
If you do read Drummer Girl, be sure to catch the miniseries adaptation that Park Chan-wook did a few years ago. It is stunning. Every frame is a painting. I think it’s the best le Carre adaptation since Alec Guinness’ Tinker. The whole genre had a bit of an identity crisis after the Cold War. Graham Greene died in 1991. Len Deighton more or less retired in the mid-90s. Le Carre cast around for a bit before really finding his footing, although I think The Night Manager is a more sophisticated book than it gets credit for being. Lots of critics say that arms dealers aren’t as compelling a villian after East vs. West of the Cold War, but I think they miss the reorientation of the state within this new paradigm. The problem isn’t the arms dealers, it’s the state’s corruption and enabling of those arms dealers, and it sets up a new agent vs. his own government dynamic that persists in the genre into the 21st century. Basically, the Bond movie Spectre owes a debt to le Carre for being the first (or among the first) to tease out the themes of paranoia, surveillance of one’s own, and corruption within the state within the genre post-Cold War.
No insult intended to le Carre fans, but I’d suggest a new spy thriller fan start with Len Deighton. Once you’ve got a handle on Deighton, then you can dive into le Carre and really appreciate his style.Deighton’s novels lean a little more into the procedural—highlighting the field craft elements. I think they’re more blue collar, where le Carre is more cerebral. Start with The IPCRESS File. After that you can continue tracking the adventures of the unnamed agent in another three novels (named Harry Palmer in the movies and played by Michael Caine). All of these were written in the ‘60s.Deighton is also a WWII scholar and that background is put to good use in SS-GB, a tightly-written late ‘70s alternate history novel that posits “what would it have been like if the Germans won the Battle of Britain?” It’s a good read and was adapted into a five-part BBC miniseries a few years ago.That brings you to the Samson trilogies; Berlin Game/Mexico Set/London Match, Spy Hook/Spy Line/Spy Sinker, and Faith/Hope/Charity. Written in the ‘80s and ‘90s, they follow a middle-aged, blue collar MI-6 agent named Bernard Samson. It’s an engrossing series and even has a prequel called Winter that gives the backgrounds of many of the trilogies’ characters.
Le Carre’s Smiley novels. They’ve never been matched, let alone surpassed. The TV adaptations from the 80s are amongst the best TV ever produced.Simon Russell Beale plays Smiley in a series for BBC radio which is also incredible
Ken Follett wrote some really good spy thrillers, fiction based in historical events.Eye of the Needle is WW2, Lie Down with Lions is the Russian/Afghanistan war, The Man from St Petersburg WWI, there are a ton of them and they are great. But LeCarre is the standard bearer. And any movie/tv based on his books is usually pretty good.
Reviewers do no favors when they compare a new writer as the heir apparent to… What sounds like praise is actually a kiss of death, because it sets the bar impossibly high.
SO nice to see the grade on this. I loved the book and it looks like they got it all right: the spycraft, the humor, the hopelessness of these nearly-ex-agents. Really looking forward to it.
Hopefulky, this show will have a tinker, a tailor, and a soldier to round out the cast..
delivered point-blank —> delivered point blankthe Slow Horses efforts —> the Slow Horses’ effortsinner-workings —> inner workingsat 64-years-old —> at 64 years old
Private Equity firms don’t need copy editors.
This feels like a show that’s tailor-made for exactly a different service than it’s actually airing on. I mean this in the best way, this feels like such a perfect BBC show that I should only be able to watch it on the exact same services that carry Doctor Who.
Love how many commenters are subconsciously slipping “tailor” into the comments, given the obvious parallels.
Subconsciously? We know what we’re doing.
Apple+’s Suspicion was pretty good until the last episode. I’m hoping Severance stays good until the finale. This looks much better.
Very meh after the first 2 episodes. British cop and espionage shows are my Jam. This feels like a show that wasn’t good enough for BBC so far.