KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 6 — It’s been a running joke on social media that the Apple TV+ show catalogue is actually impressive yet for some reason people don’t know it exists.
One notable gem in the line-up is Slow Horses, returning for a fourth season.
Gary Oldman continues to be excellent as the irascible drunk of a supposedly washed-up spymaster and is a very good reason to watch the show.
If you haven’t started it yet, here’s a quick summary of the premise: Slough House is where bumbling misfits who screwed up badly at MI5 get put in cold storage.
Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb whose task is mainly to be so insufferable, that the disgraced agents would get a hint and just leave the service already.
Fast and frenetic
Based on a book series written by Mick Herron, Slow Horses is not as dreary as British spy dramas can tend to be.
Don’t get me wrong.
I loved Oldman in the film version of John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but of the friends who tried watching it with me, some fell asleep and I can’t blame them.
British spy craft stories can plod along, though you will appreciate them once you get past the slow bits but Slow Horses understands that essential part of storytelling – pacing.
In the first 10 minutes of Season 4 you are already served up with not one, but two murders.
Yet nothing is what it seems and the first episode teases the layers that will need to be scraped off to find the intrigue beneath it all.
Slow Horses to its credit is also really funny.
Oldman’s line delivery is delicious and he gets the best barbs in the show but the inherent comedy in a bunch of spy rejects getting to prove they’re not actually useless is not wasted at all.
Somehow Slow Horses even deftly manages to squeeze in the trope of an incompetent middle manager who is so out of his depth that will probably be incredibly relatable for many people.
One thing that Slow Horses reminds us constantly is that people, spies included, can be very stupid.
A cast worth watching
Oldman’s Lamb is externally a flatulent, inappropriate slob but beneath his slovenly façade is an old school spy with skills he masks, along with his concern for his team.
As he likes telling people, they’re all idiots but they’re his idiots.
Speaking of idiots, Jack Lowden’s River Cartwright is back as the overly earnest Boy Scout of the pack who is unfortunately incapable of making good decisions.
It’s not a Slow Horses episode if I’m not wanting to strangle him at least once. Twice, maybe.
Kristin Scott Thomas is back as the ambitious spy chief who now finds herself demoted after a coup gone wrong and is now, again, forced to work with Lamb whom she loathes while begrudgingly acknowledging that he’s tiresomely good at his job.
Also returning are Saskia Reeves, Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung, Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Jonathan Pryce, but this time also joined by, surprise, Hugo Weaving as, I’m not spoiling it, but he will be deftly chewing up the scenery as per his habit.
Other new faces include Joanna Scanlan as a new Slough House staffer, Ruth Bradley (Primeval, Humans), Tom Brooke (Sherlock, Preacher) and James Callis (Battlestar Galactica, Bridget Jones).
Keep watching every Wednesday, as one episode drops weekly, with six episodes to enjoy with the first episode already available on Apple TV+.
