“Look what I’ve got to work with,” spits Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) during the new season of Apple TV+’s Slow Horses. “A crackhead, a drunk, a psychopath and whatever the f*** that is.” However, while Lamb’s coterie of dropouts and failures may be a hindrance to his black-sheep MI5 department, they are this show’s greatest strength. Outgoing showrunner Will Smith can shuffle his pack, rotate his squad, and give each new season fresh impetus. So while the crackhead and the drunk (Aimee-Ffion Edwards’ Shirley Dander and Saskia Reeves’s Catherine Standish) have had their moments, the psychopath (Tom Brooke’s oddball JK Coe) is still earning his stripes, and Slough House’s more capable members, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar), are out of action, the spotlight falls this time round on the “whatever the f*** that is”. Step forward, Roddy Ho.
Christopher Chung’s repellent computer hacker has always been a delightful background presence, a lurid streak of arrogance and immaturity, wrapped in the most awful tracksuits. Now, as he bops onto the screen in the opening episode, Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible” blaring from his headphones, Ho is front and centre. It seems that someone wants him dead. And, stranger yet, it seems he might have a girlfriend. Both things spark incredulity at Slough House.
