It’s truly amazing that Gary Oldman has survived his role as Jackson Lamb. Five seasons in, and the veteran actor is rarely without a cigarette in one hand, and either a bottle of hard liquor or a bacon sarney in the other. And yet, for all his greasy-haired, foul-mouthed slovenliness, you’d want him on your side in a crisis. And minutes into the first episode of season five of this high-calibre British series, a po-faced, twenty-something guy lets rip with a high-powered assault rifle in a quiet London square. Eleven dead, and the shooter has been assassinated at the scene.
Minutes later, the escape vehicle nearly runs down Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) on his way to Slough House. Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), in a feat of sheer courage, flings herself and Ho to safety, and while he shrugs it off, she becomes paranoid that without her surveillance, someone is going to murder Ho. It’s only one of the ways the Slough House team have become damaged, haunted and dispirited in the wake of multiple attempts on each of their lives, and the killing of their colleague and friend, Marcus Longridge in season four.
Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar), the voice of reason, is departing Slough House for good. Catherine (Saskia Reeves) is trailing after Jackson, trying to clean up as much of his mess (metaphorically and literally) as is humanly possible, and there’s a collective of angry, weaponised men determined to demonstrate their fury with the ‘woke’ agenda through blood and bullets. Timely.
But, being Slow Horses, this tale takes a twist, naturally. There are malevolent forces at work (Libya, to be specific) to bring down the entirety of London, and these bad actors appear to have knowledge of MI5 strategies. Are there insiders involved?
In their own quirky way, the Slough Horses are on the trail. But so is Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her expert team. The power battle threatens to stymie both teams—genuine MI5 agents and their clumsy counterparts—and all the while, bombs go off in central London, traffic is frozen (more than usual), and politicians are putting their lives on the line every time they appear in public.
Previous series of Slow Horses have focused much more on the interpersonal relationships between River, his grandfather, and his father. This season is much more tightly focused on the team (minus Marcus and Catherine) as they depend more than ever on their smaller ranks, and each having survived numerous attempts on their lives. Though Lamb sputters “fuck off” nearly as regularly as breathing, we’ve come to appreciate that he will put his life on the line for his agents. Perhaps, they’re the Addams Family of British investigative organisations. There’s more than enough weird, wonderful, absurd qualities to the characters and the situations they find themselves in to warrant such a comparison.
The actual plot of Slow Horses is perfunctory, which belies the “spy thriller” label. Who were the various baddies in seasons one through four? Genuinely, I couldn’t tell you. The real focus of every episode is really a stage for the games of loyalty, family, rejection and relationship dramas. Kristin Scott Thomas and Gary Oldman paired in the same scene is always the highlight—his grumpy, flatulent, foul-mouthed Lamb and her prim, haughty, impatient Taverner barely keep it polite, but they fully respect that they’re the only capable people in the room when the UK faces near-certain demise.
Jack Lowden’s River and the malevolent, but strangely amusing, J.K. Coe (a brilliantly po-faced Thomas Brooke), have extra screen time in the latest season. Their absurd pairing has legs for a spin-off series, with River playing the straight man to J.K’s cherry-eating, hoodie-wearing, mysterious misfit. Their scenes are an immense ode to longtime writer and executive Will Smith, who wraps his Slow Horses work with this season. Whoever gets the reins for the (already confirmed) season six has huge boots to fill. Smith has really maintained momentum and some very clever sight gags, vicious one-liners, and poignant revelations over five seasons, which is a tall order for any writer and their cast.
Whoever the scribe is for the next season, we’ll always have seasons one to five (with the first, third and fifth seasons being my personal favourites), and a soundtrack that deserves its very own acknowledgement. Emmy winners for the series, Toydrum had already established their musical credentials outside of film and television, with both members (Pablo Clements and James Griffith) well-known to Britpop, trip hop lovers as key members of Unkle in the 1990s. Then, of course, there’s the Daniel Pemberton and Mick Jagger theme song, which—despite five seasons—never gets old. The wonky wallop of it at the outset of each episode instils that certain quant, quirky, gritty, grimy feel of Slow Horses itself.
All of these factors—Smith’s writing, Oldman and Scott Thomas’s warring spy agency leaders, the quibbling MI5 rejects, and that killer soundtrack. Welcome back, Slow Horses season five, and may the next series stand up as regally as this one does.
