Spy shows never really go out of style. One of the most popular on the air at the moment is The Night Agent, an action-oriented romp over on Netflix. Paramount+ has The Agency, which just started up a new season. Jack Ryan wrapped up on Amazon Prime Video not long ago, and on and on.
However, the best spy show of the past decade is tucked away on Apple TV+, easily the most under-appreciated combatant in the current streaming wars.
Slow Horses brings you everything you’d expect from a great spy drama
And a lot of things you wouldn’t
Slow Horses has been running on Apple TV+ since 2022, and has already gained a fervent fan following. Based on the Slough House book series by Mick Herron, it’s about a group of British intelligence professionals who, for some reason or another, have become a liability. Maybe they drink too much. Maybe they send inappropriate emails, or maybe they’re just really annoying and no one likes working with them. They haven’t done anything so bad that it warrants termination, but they can’t be entrusted with important work within the MI5 intelligence agency. So they’re sent to Slough House, where careers go to die.
Immediately, we have the setup for a delightful series. Who doesn’t like a group of bumbling underdogs rising to the occasion? As you might guess, despite the top brass at MI5 not wanting the Slow Horses (so the people in Slough House are named) doing anything too important lest they screw it up, the characters end up saving the day anyway, getting involved in multiple sensitive operations over the course of the series. By and large, each season tells a discrete story. The second season involves the assassination of a former MI5 spy, the third season deals with government corruption and cover-ups, the fifth season confronts online radicalization, and so on. And it’s always heartening to see our gang of misfits pull through despite their many handicaps.
That would be enough to make Slow Horses a show worth recommending. But it has a couple of secret weapons that make it impossible to resist.
Gary Oldman is magnificent in Slow Horses
And the show is frequently hysterical
Slough House is overseen by a veteran spy named Jackson Lamb, played by English actor Gary Oldman. Oldman played Sid Vicious and Sid and Nancy, Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies, Commissioner Gordon in The Dark Knight trilogy, and much more. He’s a living legend, and any TV show where he’s a regular has a huge advantage.
Oldman gives the performance of a lifetime on Slow Horses. He keeps giving Jackson Lamb new layers. At first, Jackson seems like a lazy, rude, flatulent burn-out who doesn’t care about any of the people who work under him…and he is a lot of those things. But as the show goes on, we come to understand that Jackson is the way he is because he’s seen a ton of people die over the course of his career, and he’s built up tons of defense mechanisms to keep himself sane. At bottom, he does care deeply about his employees, whom he calls his “Joes.” When it matters, he steps up, and we get a glimpse of the competent spy still lurking under all of that scar tissue.
Jackson’s paranoia is well-founded, because Slow Horses is entirely willing to kill off important characters, meaning that the stakes are always high. At the same time, it’s frequently very, very funny, with jokes and insults worthy of shows like HBO’s Veep. That’s not an accident, since creator and showrunner Will Smith (no relation) actually worked on Veep, as well as on the British sitcom The Thick of It. Fans sometimes compare Slow Horses to The Office, and the comparison really does hold, right up until the point where the bodies start dropping.
Slow Horses puts out new seasons at a decent clip
That’s a miracle in the world of prestige TV
There’s a lot more to praise about Slow Horses. We haven’t talked about stand-out characters like River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), the audience surrogate who’s banished to Slough House in the first episode after messing up an assignment. Kristin Scott Thomas plays Diana Taverner, the power-hungry Deputy Director General of MI5 and Jackson’s boss. Christopher Chung steals several scenes as Roddy Ho, a talented computer expert who’s so arrogant and obnoxious that Slough House was the only place that would take him. The ensemble becomes very likable very quickly. You’ll be entertained by them, but you’ll also be scared for them.
The sixth season of Slow Horses will premiere on September 16, 2026. Unlike a lot of prestige TV shows these days, Slow Horses has put out a new season every year. The catch is that they’re only six episodes long, but you still won’t have to wait an eternity between seasons.
7 slow-burn thrillers to keep you hooked for weeks
Murder mysteries, British spies, armed wives, and a misunderstood adolescent are the subjects of these slow-burning series now streaming.
The slow road ahead
Slow Horses has already been renewed for a seventh season. There’s no official word on how long the show will last, but as long as the quality stays high, we’re happy for it to go on as long as the cast and crew can manage it.
The series may even get more interesting as it goes on. Season 4 introduced a major antagonist named Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving), and it looks like he may break up the one-story-per-season rule the show has mostly stuck to up until now.
One of the biggest obstacles to Slow Horses becoming the breakout hit it deserves to be is the fact that it’s on Apple TV+, which is one of the less popular streaming services. But if any show can break free of that gravity, it’s this one.
- Release Date
-
April 1, 2022
- Network
-
Apple TV+
- Showrunner
-
Douglas Urbanski
-
-
Jack Lowden
River Cartwright
-
Kristin Scott Thomas
Diana Taverner
-
Saskia Reeves
Catherine Standish
