The Slough House is not just investigating but being investigated in the trailer for season five of beloved spy series Slow Horses. An apparent attack suggests that someone in the team of misfits has been compromised, sending them into lockdown and triggering the trailer’s first intriguing aspect: a locked room mystery! By the looks of it, they aren’t shut in for long, but don’t worry, there’s more intrigue: a ticking clock mystery! And of course there’s always Lamb’s (Gary Oldman) reliable snark to keep audiences coming back when the season premieres September 24 on Apple TV+.
Adapted from Mick Herron’s novel London Rules, in the fifth season “everyone is suspicious when resident tech nerd Roddy Ho has a glamorous new girlfriend,” per a synopsis from Apple, “but when a series of increasingly bizarre events occur across the city, it falls to the Slow Horses to work out how everything is connected. After all, Lamb knows that in the world of espionage, the London Rules—cover your back—always apply.”
It’s a tall order for the Slow Horses: clear their names, prevent “the apocalypse,” and perhaps convince River (Jack Lowden) he belongs on the team. Five seasons in, and he’s still insisting “I shouldn’t be in Slough House, and you know that,” to his mentor. “[The] thing about Lamb is that he always gives the impression that he doesn’t care, and he probably cares more than most,” Oldman shared with The A.V. Club last year, relishing the “delicious cocktail” of the complicated team relationships. “He sees the potential of River, that he could be a very good spy. But part of him probably wants River not to be a spy and follow in his footsteps because the game of spying has really messed up Lamb.”
Academy Award winner Oldman said working with the Slow Horses ensemble is “the closest I’ve come to the theater in that sense, of having a company. It’s like you have your own sort of conspiracy. You’re a gang, you know? You’re in a club.” In addition to Lowden, the club also includes Kristin Scott Thomas,Saskia Reeves, Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Ruth Bradley, James Callis, Tom Brooke, and Jonathan Pryce, plus the fifth season’s special guest star Nick Mohammed (Ted Lasso). “I’m very fond of them,” Oldman told us. “They’re just an amazing, really lovely group of people who I think have inhabited these characters and just do a brilliant job.”
