Get on the Fast Train to Slow Horses

There has never been a better time to get into Slow Horses.

Actually, wait, no. That’s not true. The best time to get into Slow Horses was a while ago, both because it’s a terrific little thriller series and because if you had started it already, then you would be all caught up for season four when it premiered this week. Also, then I would have more people to discuss Slow Horses with, which would be nice.

I’m not alone on this island. The Apple TV+ show about bumbling British spies has been building steam over its first three seasons and just picked up a slew of Emmy nominations, including biggies like Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor. It feels like we’re approaching a tipping point where Slow Horses moves from “nice show some people say is good” to A Thing People Talk About. It’s always fun to have one of those. It’s even better when you get to be one of the insufferable people who’s all, “Actually, I was watching before it became a thing” about it. A little pop-culture superiority can be a nice treat once in a while.

Just in case you need more convincing, though, let’s tick off the main reasons this show has become such a nasty little delight.

It is, despite the title, a frenetic blast.

Based on the series of books by Mick Herron, Slow Horses follows the adventures of a group of spies who work out of Slough House, a kind of dumping ground for wayward souls who didn’t hack it in the main office of MI5. Each season tracks a new case or mystery or conspiracy or a combination of all three. Things usually start out slow and escalate quickly, with stolen diamonds or detestable weasels getting comeuppance or planes carrying bombs headed for the heart of London. It is massively bingeable in the good way, not in the way that feels like empty calories. Think of 24 with a soul, and also everyone you’re rooting for is kind of terrible at their job. I promise this is a compliment.

And here’s the best part, if you’re thinking about starting and want to catch up quick: Slow Horses follows the very British model of six-episode seasons, which means you can get through the first three in one or two lazy weekends and jump straight into the fourth as its weekly release drips out.

Gary Oldman is television’s most flatulent spy.

Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the leader of the team at Slough House and a truly miserable and unkempt crank. Just a disaster of a human being, mean and dismissive and generally disinterested in the most basic forms of decency. He seems to delight in his cruelty sometimes, especially when it comes to his relationship with his office administrator Catherine Standish, who is almost always on the receiving end of a crack about her naïveté or struggle with alcohol.

Also, I would be surprised if the character showered more than once a week. He passes gas so frequently his farts deserve their own SAG card. He’s also a great spy when he gets motivated, and he’s secretly a solid team leader who is protective of his people. (Kind of.) (Sometimes.)

But the main thing is that Jackson Lamb is a great television character, a truly original creation who can probably best be described as “Columbo + Scrooge + IBS.” Oldman seems to be having a hoot in the role, too, which has landed him one of the show’s aforementioned Emmy nominations. I hope he wins and opens his acceptance speech with a belch.

My sweet bungly boy River makes a mess of everything.

Everyone who works in Slough House is a mess. Catherine is an alcoholic who can’t get her life together. Shirley is a drug addict who steals. Marcus is a gambling addict who keeps heavy artillery in his trunk. Louisa brings loser guys home and sometimes pockets valuable evidence. Roddy is an abrasive hacker dork who says things like, “What would Alexander the Great do?” before crashing a party bus into a house on purpose. But no one screws up quite like River Cartwright.

River, played by Jack Lowden, is the grandson of a legendary spy. He is very handsome and means well and is also maybe the dumbest man who has ever lived. He charges into situations with the confidence of a much more competent person, then finds himself in so far over his head he’d need a ladder to see where he started. It’s a little charming, actually, watching this man who thinks he’s James Bond find out he’s Mr. Bean over and over and over. In the last two seasons alone, he has been duped by one woman into storming into British intelligence headquarters in the name of gallantry and by another woman who left him incapacitated in an airplane hangar because he could not fathom that she was the mole he’d been looking all along. I am very excited to see what he screws up in the fourth season. I hope he locks himself out of a nuclear submarine and it sinks to the bottom of the Thames.

Diana Taverner is a world-class schemer with an exciting new haircut.

Hey, do you like Kristin Scott Thomas? Do you want to watch a show where she is constantly using silly little men like marionettes? Maybe one where she sometimes stages a bloody intra-agency coup at MI5 that works perfectly and yet also fails completely, leaving her still stuck inside an infuriating bureaucracy and somehow more and less powerful at the same time? Perhaps one where she gets a drastic new haircut between seasons, possibly as a result of everything in the last sentence making her desperate to control ONE THING IN HER LIFE, EVEN IF IT’S HER HAIR?

Of course you do. Or you should, at least. And lucky for you, that’s exactly what you’re getting as we roll into season four. It’s a treat to watch her operate, especially when she’s slicing through the water like a shark. She has all the tact and restraint that Jackson lacks, a knack for navigating a world he doesn’t even want to visit, making the periodic scenes where they share the screen riveting television.

The new haircut is pretty nice, too.

Things are escalating as we head into season four.

Season three ended with two episodes of shoot-outs and double-crosses and grenades and an MI5 shake-up as a result of, well, all the shoot-outs and double-crosses and grenades. Much of this was thanks to (and despite) the actions of the sociopaths and doofuses at Slough House who unwittingly helped (and thwarted) the plot along the way. The new season opens with a suicide bombing and what appears to be a multilayered conspiratorial plot to damage the British government, all of which is actually kind of par for the course for Slow Horses. Once again, the safety of the entire country appears to be in the hands of a group of people you wouldn’t trust to watch your dog for a single afternoon. It’s all really very exciting.

You might as well make use of that Apple subscription now that you have it.

Apple TV+ has been on a bit of a heater lately. Its summer has been loaded with relentlessly watchable B+ shows like Presumed Innocent and Bad Monkey, the latter of which is still humming and will continue humming right through the middle of Slow Horses. Severance is back for a second season in January. Ted Lasso is coming back too, apparently. If one or all of those things were what convinced you to sign up for a subscription, then please, for the sake of stretching your dollar and extracting value from your purchase, dive into Slow Horses as soon as you can.