Slow Horses is not just one of the great British spy shows of recent years, it’s one of the great shows to come out of Britain full stop.
And series four delivers more of the same: a fully realised world, superb script, a stellar cast all at the top of their game and a lot of great action. And at just six episodes it leaves the viewer desperate for more.
This series is based on Spook Street, the fourth in Mick Herron’s excellent series of novels about the misfit spies – aka the Slow Horses – MI6 have dumped in the dingy headquarters Slough House to keep them away from trouble. But, of course, trouble is never far away.
This time round starts with a bang with a bombing in a shopping mall, but how does that lead to Slough House? Closer to home the grandfather of slow horse River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) believes he’s being followed, and River is getting worried about the man who brought him up.
This series is about families, or more specifically dysfunctional families – the slow horses being among the most dysfunctional. Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb, the slobby pater familias, is as unkempt and uncouth as ever, still revelling in this repellent but magnetic character. Overall, though this series belongs to Lowden.
As well as trying to escape Slough House and make his way back to the Park – MI6’s headquarters – this wannabe Bond is having to care for his grandfather David (a befuddled and brilliant Jonathan Pryce), who is struggling with dementia.
The returning cast is superb, from Kristin Scott Thomas, Saskia Reeves and Price to Rosalind Eleazar and Kadiff Kirwin. And there are some fantastic additions to the cast including Matrix and Lord of the Rings alum Hugo Weaving, Joanna Scanlan, a busybody who tries to tidy up Slough House (good luck) and James Callis, as the secret Service’s new ‘First Desk’ who is way out of his dept.
The writing by Veep’s Will Smith is tight, darkly funny and never cliched, while the show has never looked better, in all its grimy, dishevelled glory. It has the polished action scenes, but mostly this is a world of dingy pubs and beige corridors. It’s a very recogniseable London, if an unusual one to see in a prestige show.
This magnificent show is impossible not to binge, and devastating when you’ve done so. Fortunately the fifth series has been filmed. Now just the long wait. Those slow horses can’t arrive quickly enough.
