There are a few no-miss TV pitches, shows that will be commissioned again and again until the light fades out of the sky: “coppers – what if there was a good one?”; “genius detective investigates a murder despite not quite being over their dead kid”; “we’ll never work out as a couple … unless?”; and, of course, “I’m a spy, but get this: one who breaks all the rules”. They won’t stop making them and I won’t stop watching them. And so I gleefully welcome season three of Slow Horses (Apple TV+, from 29 November).
It’s wild how good Slow Horses is, actually. We should be talking about it all the time. Gary Oldman is a standout – he looks so deliciously dreadful as Jackson Lamb, lank hair combed down with chipshop grease, a Fergie-red nose with pores the size of saucers, staggering around like a huge garlic bulb learned how to walk – but the cast is stacked with big hitters. Kristin Scott Thomas doing elegant-matriarch-with-mischief-in-her-eyes, Jack Lowden doing a particular flavour of strapping bloke who can deliver a punch but also a zinger, Christopher Chung’s enjoyably slimy computer nerd Roddy Ho, and I’ve never not liked Kadiff Kirwan in anything.
