It’s been less than a year since the Slow Horses season 4 finale, and the banished detectives of Slough House are as slow to recover from those tragic events as the audience. On the surface, not much has changed with our plucky but disreputable agents, but episode 1 reveals that the events of the previous season have left some major holes in the confidence and sanity of Jackson Lamb’s (Gary Oldman) stable of donkeys. Just as the windows and cabinets of Slough House remain unrepaired, so too do our characters.
Slow Horses gets right into the mayhem and keeps a steady thrumming beat through the second episode while expertly pulling us into a gripping plot that has the members of Slough House directly in its crosshairs. Lamb is the only one still operating at his full capacity, with everyone else dealing with the events of the previous seasons, either healthily or unhealthily. This lack of focus could not come at a worse time for MI5 and Slough House, but it’s great for us, and episodes 1 and 2, “Bad Dates” and “Incommunicado”, fly by, leaving us wanting more.
A Mysterious Organization Is Fomenting Mass Murders & Targeting Slough House
MI5 Investigates Slough House For Their Involvement In The Recent Spate Of Crimes
“Bad Dates” opens on a blunt and brutal mass shooting, shocking in its simplicity. An unnamed man only needs seconds with his large caliber rifle to murder 11 innocent people. There may not be a lot of blood, but seeing the man deliberately point and shoot at someone off in the background who falls limp, is a queasy feeling. He’s not an expert, and it’s frightening how simple it is to initiate a catastrophe. The only real moment of gore comes when a bullet takes off the top of the shooter’s head.
His killer hops into a van, which does its best to smash into Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), dancing and spinning through London on his way to work. He’s saved in the nick of time by Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), but no one believes her when she says the car was definitely aiming at Roddy. This isn’t just the usual laziness of Slough House. If an MI5 agent is targeted, then the rules state headquarters needs to be alerted. Never one to let the Dogs in, Jackson nurses his private concerns while publicly pretending Shirley is delusional.
Shirley turns out to be right, and it’s only with the intervention of Lamb that Roddy survives an attempt on his life. The assassin gets away alive but not unscathed. His partners in crime aren’t too jazzed about how Shirley caught a glimpse of his face, though, and he ends up as a burned corpse on the side of the road.
We’re not quite sure who these men are, or who the young British lads are who purchase some sort of explosive from them, but Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) can’t be kept off the scent for long. At the end of “Incommunicado”, Slough House is on lockdown until she finds out what’s going on.
The Members Of Slough House Are Still Reeling From The Events Of Season 4
River Cartwright Has Not Come To Terms With His Father’s Attempt To Kill Him
While we may still be in the dark about who’s responsible for the mass killing and who’s targeting Roddy Ho and the rest of Slough House, we’re let in on all the personal turmoil crippling the agents there. Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar) is taking a leave of absence that is not-so-secretly a permanent resignation. Shirley is rage-filled and back to using, even though she desperately tries to imagine what Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan) would say to her to talk her off the ledge.
Worse than anyone is River Cartwright (Jack Lowden). He says he wants everyone to move on from the events of last season, but he’s the most stuck. His grandfather is sinking deeper into his dementia, and River’s description of the once great agent who told vivid stories of the Cold War, now repeating movie plotlines as if they were real, is a painfully accurate depiction of the disease.
That’s not all River is facing down. The identity of his father, and the fact that he tried to kill him in season 4, has sparked a vengeful, competitive spirit in River that Lamb says makes him useless in the field. Lamb is surrounded by a “crack-up, a drunk, a psychopath, whatever the f**k that is (Roddy)“, and he still prefers them to someone like River, who is “fightin’ the last war.”
Slough House is in as rough a shape as ever, but far from feeling like a retread, Slow Horses is unafraid to stick with what makes it unique. Few shows weave together competing storylines so effectively, stopping and starting just as our attention wanes. Even the brief crumbs about male rage and violent rhetoric inspiring violent political acts are cleverly, but clearly, woven in. Slow Horses season 5 is primed to be another excellent installment in the series.
New episodes of Slow Horses release every Wednesday on Apple TV+.
- Release Date
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April 1, 2022
- Network
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Apple TV+
- Directors
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Saul Metzstein, James Hawes, Jeremy Lovering
- Writers
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Mark Denton, Jonny Stockwood
