There are certain things that are always going to happen in a Slow Horses premiere, simply as a matter of course. River Cartwright will always get himself hurt or humiliated doing something that would have worked in an action movie, as Jack Lowden bends his natural “This is why he keeps getting short-listed for Bond” talents to the series’ more cynical take on spycraft. Kristin Scott Thomas’ Diana Taverner will always freeze an underling into a block of solid ice with the power of a perfectly lifted eyebrow, before we watch her inwardly flip out over persistently being only the second-smartest spy in the room. And Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb will, inevitably, rip absolute ass while also being the first person to begin connecting the dots on whatever campaign of supposedly disconnected skullduggery will end up forming the season’s overall plot. These things are all expected; the show’s conformation to its formula, lifted happily from Mick Herron’s bestselling Slough House books, is part of the pleasure of returning to one of Apple TV’s most satisfying shows year in and out.
The differences between premieres mostly come down to tone, then, and Christ, but does the show’s sixth-season starter set a bleak one. Even before we get to the River of it all—in what’s promising to be a pretty River-heavy season—we start with a blast from the dismal past: Paul Higgins’ Struan Loy, who returns after four seasons away to a) remind us of what an irritating, delusional git he could be, and b) burn to death in the most horrific manner possible.
Someone is bumping off the worst spies in London, turns out, as we get just a few glimpses of Andor’s Kyle Soller and The Witcher’s MyAnna Buring killing off former Slough House residents with a low-grade presentation of charming psychosis. (The casual contempt with which they fail to keep their story straight, to the point that even as Slow a Horse as Loy can figure it out, is a creepy early touch.) The how of this little killing spree is immolation and abrupt drownings; the “Why?” remains an open question—although the ascension of Thomas’ Taverner to MI5’s fabled First Chair, and her reticence to let Lamb know about Loy’s death when underling Emma Flyte brings it up, certainly raise some red flags. Taverner remains one of modern TV’s great antagonists specifically because it’s even odds whether she’s actively masterminding the deaths of all our main characters, or simply in the dark about a wider plot: Thomas plays her as so gloriously compartmentalized that it can be entirely plausible that Lady Di is both genuine in her polite murmurs of condolence to River about the passing of his grandfather, and getting ready to jot his name down on a black ops kill list.
Because the marquee event of “Circle Of Life” is, of course, the death of, and funeral for, former MI5 head David Cartwright, and the presumed final departure of Jonathan Pryce from Slow Horses’ cast. (After one last, typically affecting flashback between grandfather and grandson.) Despite the stiff-upper-lip-but-in-a-warm-way pleasures of Pryce’s performance, David has always worked largely as an accessory character in these stories: A reminder of Lamb’s nasty old past, and River’s constantly stunted future. Here, he gets to be both memorialized hero and Old Spies punchline, as (in the episode’s funniest scene) River attempts to memorialize his grandfather’s dedication to the greater good at the funeral while forced to refer to him only as the nondescript head of the U.K.’s Department Of Transport—much to Lamb’s cackling delight about all the “cars and buses…minibuses…” that Cartwright The Elder saved.
The laughs drain back out, though, for the episode’s big final reveal: That River’s father Frank has returned, dragging with him a whole host of callbacks, and the deadly spectre of Lore, to a show that’s often made a virtue of treating things like excessive continuity or character growth with a measure of contempt. I can’t hate Frank’s return, solely because watching Hugo Weaving purr threats and roll his eyes before casually kicking his son’s ass remains a genuine pleasure to behold. But it does suggest that Slow Horses is abandoning a bit of the unsentimental spark that makes its special blend of caustic workplace sitcom and cutthroat espionage thriller feel unique. It’s not that I don’t like River, because I do, as Lowden deploys a consistent knack for making the poor bastard just enough of a whiny asshole to deserve his treatment as Britain’s Most Consistently Incorrect Man. But I do get nervous when the show starts to steer into his delusions of main character-hood, and the intrusion of his supervillain dad back into the picture feels like a harbinger of more of that kind of thing to come.
“Circle Of Life” is more interesting when it leans into its depiction of stasis as the slow prologue to decay. (There’s a reason we open on a shot of roadkill getting mashed even further into the blacktop, after all.) The constant rain of the episode turns London into a funereal sludge of misery, as Slough House itself takes on the spectre of an abandoned building on the verge of condemnation. In almost literal terms, as it turns out, as the rest of the crew discover that someone’s sending estate agents over to sell the building, while the Slow Horses themselves have all been surreptitiously booted from MI5’s payroll, prompting Lamb to declare he’s on “strike.” Our supporting characters are mostly in static positions of their own here (another indication that this is a season that’ll go heavier on Lamb and River than the wider team), with Coe still a quiet but effective psychopath, Ho a living cartoon—albeit one who struggles to bring his usual splashes of goofball color to these dismal proceedings—and Shirley now exuding a slightly less coke-addled version of impatient kid energy.
Saskia Reeves’ Catherine, meanwhile, gets hit with another of those indicators that Slow Horses’ sixth season is finally ditching its usual Lamb-esque approach to pacing and deploying some long-festering narrative continuity, as she finally receives a reveal that the show (and Taverner) have been keeping in their back pocket for five seasons at this point: That Jackson was the one who killed her old boss/MI5 traitor Charles Painter. Reeves is so obviously the show’s beating heart—both sincerely sweet and deeply funny, as when she visits The Park to find out from former Slough House secretary Moira that the team’s erasure has been completely deliberate, and comes away with a nasty case of printer envy—that the show has found multiple ways to imperil her over the years. But this feels like the kind of trigger that can’t be unpulled; it contributes mightily to the feeling that things at Slough House have finally turned terminal. (To the point that I was a little surprised, while writing this, to learn that the show has at least two seasons left to go.)
I don’t want to give the impression that “Circle Of Life” is strictly a slog, because the show itself is still clearly having some fun, even if none of its characters are. But we’re still clearly in for a Bummer Season, as our main characters face the prospect of transition (or their inability to do the same), each, in their own way, as dead as that car-blasted animal in the episode’s opening shot. As someone who prizes those aspects of Slow Horses that often run contrary to the standard underdog story beats its whole structure seems designed to sell, I’ll confess to some anxiety: There’s a slight lack of confidence in the way the series seems to be reaching for elements that might satisfy its audience, whether it’s cameos from old friends, the trigger being pulled on long-lurking story beats, or Weaving’s malevolent loom. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious to see where things were headed next.
Stray observations
- •Welcome to The A.V. Club’s coverage of Slow Horses season 6! We won’t be doing full episodic recaps for each episode this season, but we will have a mid-season check-in, followed by a review of the finale, as we track just how dismal this thing is going to get.
- •Having both Paul Higgins and Joanna Scanlan in the same episode is really testing my “Hey, who wants to talk about The Thick Of It?” impulses.
- •As of writing this, I haven’t watched past the premiere, so this is strictly speculation: I really do think it might be Taverner pulling the strings here. It’s too easy to imagine her giving herself “The total destruction of Jackson Lamb” as a promotion present, and her deployment of the Painter secret is done very strategically.
- •Coe has switched from podcasts to Kofi Stone; he’s still scary as hell when he decides there’s a threat around, though, as the estate agent (and Ho’s keyboard) learn.
- •For half a second, I thought River actually had gotten that promotion Lamb had half-promised him last season; as always, though, it’s respect for his grandfather, not him, that gives him half a minute of Taverner’s time.
- •“Well, keep it brief. The dead aren’t served by shaggy dog funerals.”
- •“Funny isn’t a quality I look for in a head Dog. Nor is presumption.” The main reason I hope Taverner isn’t the villain here is because losing Thomas (and line reads like that) would take out one of the main pillars holding my joy with this series up.
- •Our other possible culprit: Go-to all-purpose slimeball Peter Judd, who informs Taverner that he got the money she took off of him last season (and which is now keeping the lights on at MI5) from sources she might not wind up liking.
- •Ho, ever the philosopher, quotes an apparently apocryphal line attributed to late Fast And Furious star Paul Walker in his efforts to “help” River with his grief.
- •Lamb, to Flyte, when she defies Taverner to tell him about Loy’s death: “This has got to stop, I’ve moved on, and so should you. Think of me… as a beautiful dream.”
- •Once you start noticing that Ho only plays Sony games—in this case, 2020’s Ghost Of Tsushima—the product placement really becomes hard to ignore.
- •“You know, at school he was said to have fellated more masters than any other boy; it’s quite the achievement, when you consider the competition.” Samuel West has a lot of fun as Judd.
- •Gary Oldman’s performance on this show is a fascinating blend of subtle and not; there’s all the gas, of course, but also note the way he casually deflects blame off Flyte for telling him about Loy’s death by blaming it on scuttlebutt at the funeral.
- •Coe and Shirley are now a default duo, having strong “awkward kids” energy as they hang out at the funeral, waiting for a free sausage roll.
- •Weaving doesn’t get any especially great lines in his brief appearance, but he really has mastered the art of making the most innocuous phrases sound like the most mustache-twirling monologue impossible. I want to watch Frank at the supermarket, scaring the shit out of people while he asks what aisle the cereal is in.
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