“I want what I always want,” Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), perpetually the smartest guy in the room, plainly tells the head of MI5 (James Callis’ Claude Whelan), perpetually the dumbest, in the closing minutes of the upcoming season of Slow Horses, “…to be left in utter fucking peace.” The more things change, the more they remain the same on this show. And there’s a certain comfort in knowing that whatever is thrown at the outcast agents employed at Slough House—new threats include a racist demagogue, a mass shooter, a group that’s bombing penguins at the London Zoo, and another that’s causing car hoods to burst into flames in the name of climate change—the Apple TV+ series always goes back, essentially, to the same playbook: The city faces catastrophe, Lamb & co. are told to not mettle, they do anyway, and then save the day with seconds to spare. Toss in some smart shit-talking and narrative go-tos, like immediately following tragedy (say, a massacre during an ugly election) with a heavy dose of silliness (say, a jackass annoyingly and joyously dancing to Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible” on his way to work) and you have a show with the twisty, spycraft storytelling bones and comedic chemistry to keep audiences coming back for more.
Now, is it incredulous that everyone still underestimates the Slow Horses time and city-saving time again? Sure. But that is part of the baked-in charm of this series, which, to be fair, does throw the occasional fatal curveball to keep audiences on their toes and the stakes high by killing off an endearing character like Marcus Longridge (Kadiff Kirwan) in season four. Speaking of, that season is a tough act to follow. The series felt like it got notably deeper last year, with River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) dealing with some screwed-up daddy issues and Lamb, of all people, showing the slightest hints of compassion. “He always gives the impression that he doesn’t care, and he probably cares more than most,” Oldman said of his character in an interview with The A.V. Club about that standout batch of episodes.
At first, this season of Slow Horses struggles to live up to its last. The familiar banter and caustic put-downs from Lamb are still there and firing as fast and as amusingly as ever. But the juice of this particular tale (which is based on London Rules, the fifth novel in Mick Herron’s series) feels, while certainly timely, with a politician played by Ted Lasso‘s Nick Mohammed vowing to “Make London Londerful Again,” thinner and, dramatically, less emotionally complex. Some of that is bound to happen when you take characters who have mostly been on the back burner and move them closer to the front, like Roddy Ho (a very funny Christopher Chung), that aforementioned dancing idiot/Slough House hacker who finds himself at the center of some international payback. He is exactly the kind of guy who’d say Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia “taught me a lot about women” and refer to himself as “Dragon Slayer, the Human Tripod, the True King Of Gondor” in front of MI5 top brass (Kristin Scott Thomas’ Diana Taverner).
Similarly, Lamb’s meek, longtime—and long-suffering—secretary Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) and not-so-meek agent Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), who’s still beating herself up over Marcus’ death, also get more to do, teaming up to try and thwart an assassination. Even last season’s Silent Hoodie Guy (Tom Brooke’s J.K. Coe) moves a bit into the spotlight, becoming the reluctant partner of River and saying actual human words out loud—to the point that the latter begs, “Just fucking shut up, okay?” This many seasons in, the show needs to do some of this maneuvering so as not to drive home the same central characters’ issues and burn out. It’s just that they—again, understandably—don’t hit like, for instance, River’s bond with his dementia-addled grandfather (played by Jonathan Pryce), a relationship that largely fades into the background this time around.
But that doesn’t make any of this less delightful to watch, maybe just less fulfilling. And, on that note, it’s worth singling out creator (and Emmy winner) Will Smith, who’s leaving the show and managed to deliver five consistently entertaining seasons of TV in only three-and-a-half years. “Right now, we’re at DEFCON shit, fuck, bollocks, and scramble,” Lamb spits out in the back half of this season. And no doubt, the Slow Horses will be in that very specific, precarious spot soon enough, with the season ending, per usual, with an energetic teaser of the next that’s hard not to get excited about.
Slow Horses season five premieres September 24 on Apple TV+
