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Slow Horses
Slow Horses Cast: Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Olivia Cooke, Saskia Reeves
Slow Horses Creator: Will Smith
Streaming Platform: AppleTV+
Slow Horses Stars: 3/5
There is something immensely addictive about watching flawed, imperfect people on screen. A part of it I believe is that it makes us feel seen. Sometimes don’t own up to our darkest, dirtiest or silliest sides and hence when you watch someone else be that version of themselves in front of you, there’s an instant connection or interest that you take in them. In the case of Slow Horses, it’s the same deal. After being used to watching spies and MI5 agents being the larger than life heroic villains, the series gives us a taste of what seemingly incapable, forgotten, discarded agents look like.
Based on Mick Herron’s sharp novel series, the show follows the storyline of the first book as it introduces us to the author’s famous character of Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and his bunch of misfit agents thrown into the dingy corner of London in an outpost that gathers its name as Slough House, a pun based on its location that is far off from the MI5 headquarters in Regent’s Park. Taking on from Herron’s book, the series introduces and develops the main characters who are a part of Jackson Lamb’s ‘slow horses’ gang.
The series kicks off with River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) being in the middle of tracking a suspect at London airport. While the chase goes for a good ten minutes, it is later revealed that the assignment is botched up by River, thus leading him to be transferred to the Slough House along with Lamb (Oldman) his boss and colleagues including the smartest agent and the boss’ favourite, Sid (Olivia Cooke), a rather cocky tech-guy Roddy (Christopher Chung), the disorganised Min (Dustin Demri-Burns), Struan (Paul Higgins) and one of the most interesting of them all, Catherine (Saskia Reeves).
While Cartwright isn’t ready to give it all up and let the dull energy of the Slough House office rub off on him, he gets the perfect chance to prove that he is a worthy agent as a case presents itself with a young man named Hassan (Antonio Aakeel) being taken as a hostage and the abductors releasing videos threatening to kill him. Even as Jackon brushes his team off saying the case is for “real agents” to solve, in an unlikely situation, he does find himself and his team getting in the middle of the biggest case there is. Will the discarded agents prove that their collective genius could help rattle a major case is what is left to see.
Will Smith (not the actor), writer of Veep comes on board to adapt Herron’s book for the first season of the show and it’s instantly seen how good he is at preparing a show that could be The Office, but with discarded agents and deeply flawed individuals. The zany dialogues are effectively the show’s strongest point and quite a few of Herron’s famous one-liners for the character of Jackson Lamb also make it on the show. Lamb (Oldman) is the kind of boss who takes the least bit of interest in his “work” and has no respect for his team whatsoever. He’s hurling abuses, drinking at work and the biggest reminder for his entire team that it’s potentially impossible to get out of the Slough House, once thrown into the pit. From digging through the trash for unknown clues to other menial jobs such as parking tickets from ten years ago, the Slough House is the deathbed for agents and its River (Lowden) aspirational character who seems to be the only one who hopes to make it out of there. A grandson of MI5 legend (Jonathan Pryce), Cartwright, in his head is a great agent but certainly not the smartest one.
In author Mick Herron’s work, there is a lot more political commentary that merely touches the surface of the series. His wry, British humour also doesn’t translate as well as it does in the books but then again, that’s a case with most adaptations where the source material remains much richer in context and commentary. Slow Horses as Gary Oldman rightly described in one of his interviews is the “other side of James Bond” and while it’s an interesting concept, the show does take its own sweet time over six episodes to completely get you on board with the Slough House gang. What starts off as a promising show with a bunch of misfits, the show does struggle to keep up its momentum and clarity of intent towards the end.
ALSO READ: Slow Horses Trailer: Gary Oldman to lead a group of disgraced MI5 agents in upcoming series
Jackson Lamb is a character so obnoxious that it required an actor with the stature of Gary Oldman to give him more layers. While the books may outrightly stick to Jackson being an extremely bitter person, Oldman makes sure to showcase a redeeming side to him beyond all his disgusting habits. The actor is seen holding onto his weight gain from Mank’s shoot to play Lamb, the boorish boss at Slough House. To his opposite is the ever-so-aspiring with an ‘I could be the next James Bond’ attitude, Jack Lowden (known for starring in Dunkirk). The Scottish actor brings an impressive portrayal of Cartwright. Olivia Cooke as the smartest in the lot does a top job playing Sid but it’s definitely Saskia Reeves’ Catherine Standish that wins our hearts. Reeves is beyond impressive in the show. There’s also Oldman’s Darkest Hour co-star Kristin Scott Thomas as the MI5 bigwig and it’s the scenes between Thomas and Oldman that also remain some of the best on the show.
All six episodes of the show have been directed by James Hawes (Black Mirror, Snowpiercer). While the episodes will be released weekly, watching them together for the review before, gave me a sense that, Hawes becomes surer of the story he wants to tell towards the end and hence there’s a little bit of incoherence that seems to be the present midseason where you’re not sure where the show is headed. Although given the characters and the cast at his hand, it’s possible to continue their story ahead in an additionally impressive manner for the next season which has already been confirmed. Slow Horses may not be everyone’s cup of tea but if you’re a sucker for British humour and Gary Oldman’s effortless acting, then this one’s for you.
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