Slow Horses’ excellent season 3 is the perfect place to jump in, actually
There was no show I heard about more during the holiday season than Slow Horses. As a TV editor, this is an anecdotal survey that made me sit up and pay attention.Seemingly everyone I talked with, at holiday parties or on vacation, was enraptured by the British spy drama on Apple TV Plus; some people gushed more about the show than they did their own children. Not one to be left out of the conversation, I plunged into the third season. And it was there I found the best kind of holiday gift: a great season of TV, and even more to watch as soon as I’m able.
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The beauty of Slow Horses — as anyone at any of these get-togethers would tell you — is in how tightly the show is constructed. Based on the Slough House novels by Mick Herron, each season adapts one book in a compact six episodes, following the lives of the intelligence officers working in the “Slough House” of MI5. Having not seen the pilot where such names and designations might be explained, I can tell you only that Slough House is a sort of dumping ground for MI5 agents who messed up. In lieu of getting fired, they get demoted (sentenced, damned) to dead-end work under the schlubby Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman).
But since each book and season is more or less self-contained, it’s pretty easy to drop in on season 3 and pick up everything you need to know about Slough House and its horses — namely that they are, in fact, exceptional agents, even if they’re a bit rougher around the edges than their brethren assigned elsewhere. At the center you have River (Jack Lowden), the hapless spy who’s always trying to do the Right Thing™, and whose career was stymied when he was framed for some screw-up. But you’ve also got Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar), who’s equal parts
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