The show works so well because it sticks to formula. No matter how many times Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), River Cartwright (maybe future Bond, Jack Lowden), and their fellow denizens of Slough House save England—nay, the world!—by the beginning of each season, their miserable status quo at the bottom rung of MI5 is reinstated. No matter the extent of their valor (or indescribable luck), Lamb’s Slow Horses remain unappreciated, crabby, and, to our great delight, busy.
Yet, as we see in this crisp, snappy trailer set to “This Fire” by Franz Ferdinand, that status quo has been disrupted by the systematic thinning out of Lamb’s division. These deaths could be a coincidence, as Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) offers during a testy debrief with Lamb in her garden, or part of a growing conspiracy, as the trailer’s accompanying synopsis suggests: “Season six sees the Slow Horses on the run as Diana Taverner embroils them all in a fatally high-stakes game of retaliation and revenge.” Well, that’s pretty cut-and-dry, now isn’t it?
Among the growing threats to Slough House is lethal duo Jane (The Witcher‘s MyAnna Buring) and Jim (Andor‘s Kyle Soller), who target both active and retired members and contribute to one of the darker moments in Mick Herron’s seventh novel in the series, “Slough House.” (This season also adapts his sixth book, “Joe Country.”) This crisis forces the team to “go dark”—despite Roddy Ho’s (Christopher Chung) achingly Millennial compulsion to use his phone—and pulls Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar) back into the fold, despite her earnest protests. As for River, he faces not one but two trailer-busting face-offs: One with Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving) and the other with Sidonie “Sid” Baker, played by returning Olivia Cooke, who I’m guessing is happy for the reprieve from all that dragon insanity she’s been enduring on a competing network.
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