Radar: Slow Horses

Subscribe to my monthly blog here for all my latest writing.

I’ve been of a bit of a slow horse myself in getting to Slow Horses Season 1. When I’ve told people recently that I’ve been watching it, they reply with ‘oh yeah, that’s an old one now.’ But, to give myself credit, I think that speaks more to the ceaseless churn of brand spanking new boxsets from an increasing range of streamers (Paramount+, Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney + and there are probably others I don’t know about) than any lapse in my conscientiousness at wasting hours of my life staring passively at a screen. Also, among these I’d say that Apple TV, the stable in which Slow Horses is kept, is one of the more inaccessible ones with the highest fees at £9.99 per month. I’m also not a huge fan of the desktop Apple TV app I watched the show on which I found to be clunky and not very user friendly when it came to manuvering between episodes. A small gripe, but I live for small gripes. 

To the show. Well, I loved it. I think. The oppressive, back street London offices of Slough House, which is essentially where the MI5 reject detectives are sent to really made you feel like you were there, to point where you could almost smell the whisky and fag breath of Jackson Lamb, the chief of rejects. Kristen Scott Thomas played her role well as the ruthless head of MI5 interested in nothing but her own promotion to ‘first desk’. Gary Oldman has one of those faces you recognise from films you can’t remember watching, and as Jackson Lamb, the greasy haired, high-blood pressure, functioning alcoholic, detective genius he’s brilliant. The show twists and turns but not so much that you have to pause to work out the moves, and remember who’s whom. It’s shot well and there’s a good mix of action and, well, slower scenes of dialogue. 

The show, and indeed Mick Herron himself, is making a clear point to criticise the shaky foundations and assumptions upon which the far-right is built upon in the UK. The scenes, for example, where the kidnappers are in the van in the final two episodes epitomise this. I don’t really think Herron and the show brought much that is new to this idea. This is England, for example, would be a greater example and more developed approach to how the working classes can be manipulated into taking far-right stances. In Slow Horses it wasn’t given enough prominence for us to really consider it, and seemed to be used instead as a vehicle for building tension and integrating violence. 

However, the real strength of the show is the blend of wit and the vivid, distinctive characterisation. The characters of River Cartwright and Ho and Lamb and Standish were so engaging that, to be honest, the plot was secondary. The show is a testament, indeed, to the power of creating original, diverse, distinct characters and how that can make or break a show. In the case of Slow Horses, the characters are the making of it.