Slow Horses: Season 4

Streaming on: Apple TV+

Episodes viewed: 6 of 6

After 2022 saw Slow Horses drop not only two complete seasons, but enough protagonist bodies to pack out a Ford Cortina, the third outing successfully lulled us into a false sense of security. Save for a kidnapping, some light torture, and a near-miss with a double-decker bus, Season 3 left our heroes largely undented. Strap in for round four, however, as showrunner Will Smith (Veep) and author Mick Herron (whose fourth book, Spook Street, is adapted here) are back on sadistic form from the get-go, not only blowing up a shopping centre in the opening scene, but placing all our heroes in the kind of mortal peril that regularly ends with a truncated cast list.

The set-up not only sees the MI5 off-cuts at Slough House trying to unravel the ongoing bomb threat, but also brings tragedy closer to home. River Cartwright’s (Jack Lowden) grandfather, former spymaster David (Jonathan Pryce), is showing early signs of dementia. This not only places a strain on Cartwright but asks difficult questions about what to do when the custodian of a thousand state secrets is no longer able to reliably keep them. A violent incident at David’s home leads to disaster, and the result is an agent on the run and forces for both good and ill stacked against them.

Likely the most fun you’ll have in front of the box all year.

Where last year gave Rosalind Eleazar’s Louisa and Saskia Reeves’ Catherine their moment in the sun, this instalment slams the spotlight firmly back on Lowden, sending him on a one-man mission that at points brings Slow Horses as close as it’s yet come to the more conventional, Ludlum-esque spy capers it so regularly subverts. But as the narrative around a shifty mercenary (Hugo Weaving, all dead eyes and crocodile grin) artfully unspools, we’re never denied a regular dose of the familiar shambolics (Christopher Chung’s Ho getting handcuffed to a chair) and rampant fuckwittery (Kadiff Kirwan’s Marcus trying to flog his gun for gambling cash) that make this series such a consistent delight.

New faces include Ruth Bradley, Joanna Scanlan and Tom Brooke, but it’s Battlestar Galactica’s James Callis who brings the most value as MI5 ‘First Desk’ Claude Whelan, an incompetent, PR-obsessed bureaucrat, who has Kristin Scott Thomas’ Taverner eye-rolling hard enough to detach a retina. And, of course, above it all, we have Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb, the dishevelled puppet-master himself, comfortably stealing every scene he’s in either with acidic sardonics or acid indigestion.

At six lean, filler-free episodes, this magnificent ride is over far, far too soon. But while it lasts, this is likely the most fun you’ll have in front of the box all year.