I imagine that the odds on Jack Lowden becoming the next Bond will inevitably be slashed once people discover just how good he is as thwarted, permanently pissed off MI5 agent River Cartwright in this impressive spy adaptation. Which is ironic, because the world of Slow Horses, based on the first in a series of novels by Mick Herron, is not remotely glamorous or hi-tech. Fellow agents drive old bangers with Coldplay CDs stuck in the hi-fi system, not Aston Martins. Lowden spends one early scene going through the contents of a rancid bin bag. 007 would never.
How did Cartwright end up on the floor of a grotty office building wearing Marigolds? The taut opening sequence, tense enough to cause the base of your stomach to fall out entirely, follows him through an airport, as frosty spy boss Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas, on glacial form) and her ingratiating subordinate Webb (Freddie Fox) issue instructions through his earpiece. His task is to identify and neutralise a suspect, who may or may not be carrying an explosive, but from the moment that a cleaner’s trolley obscures his view of his target, it becomes increasingly apparent that this op is seriously botched.
What ensues is messy enough to guarantee him a one-way ticket to Slough House, a purgatory for disgraced and demoted agents ruled over by Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), who christens his beige fiefdom “MI f**king useless”. The work he gives his underlings - Saskia Reeves’ Catherine, Rosalind Eleazar’s Louisa, Dustin Demri-Burns’ Min, the owner of the car that won’t stop wheezing out The Scientist, and now Cartwright - feels almost deliberately demeaning: wading through parking tickets from the Nineties, say, or going through the contents of a target’s wheelie bin. It is as if Lamb, whose chatter is disconcertingly scatalogical (making Slow Horses that rare thing - a prestige drama with fart jokes), is trying to troll them into resigning altogether.
The only agent trusted with proper field work is the anomalously competent Sid (Olivia Cooke). Her target is a washed-up right-wing journalist, and when news breaks that a group of far-right extremists have kidnapped Muslim student Hassan Ahmed (Antonio Aakeel), it seems like the grunt work of the “slow horses” might finally overlap with the operations of Regent’s Park, the shiny MI5 HQ they’ve been banished from - not that Taverner is overly thrilled at the prospect.
It’s tricky to further sketch out the contours of the plot without venturing into spoilers that would lessen the impact of some of the show’s more stress-inducing moments, but the series manages to play with and rearrange familiar tropes (there’s the inevitable moment when the previously disparaging Lamb gets to deliver a variation on the “they may be losers, but they’re my losers!” theme) to create something arresting and often very funny.
Writer Will Smith (not that one) has worked with Armando Iannucci on shows like Veep and The Thick of It (he played nerdy spad Phil, opposite number and nemesis to Chris Addison’s Ollie Reeder, in the latter) and you can sense a delight in the art of the unexpected insult here. “Bringing you up to speed is like explaining Norway to a dog,” Lamb rages at one colleague; another is described as “a f**king fridge magnet”. There are insufferable politicians here too. Samuel West gives a painfully believable performance as a slimy, posh Conservative MP named Peter Judd, who has shades of a certain Oxford contemporary of Herron’s.
Oldman, a million miles from his previous spy role as Le Carré’s unassuming, amiable George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, has top billing, but Slow Horses is a proper ensemble piece; everyone’s operating at top level, even if their characters are consigned to administrative drudgery.
Scott Thomas is predictably good as “Lady Di” - whose late night canalside showdown with Lamb manages to be thrilling despite her barely raising her voice - and there’s a nice cameo from Jonathan Pryce as Cartwright’s ex-service granddad, who was operational during the Cold War. Their presence doesn’t overshadow the younger cast members like Lowden (in his first TV lead role) and Cooke, though, who get plenty of moments to shine. A second series, based on Herron’s novel Dead Lions, has been confirmed to follow this one soon. I can’t wait to see what happens to this gang of mediocre misfits next.
