Slow Horses

What’s it about?

Slow Horses follows a group of disgraced MI5 agents exiled to a lowly department, having to navigate espionage, conspiracy and red tape.

Starring

Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas, Saskia Reeves, Ronke Adekoluejo, Christopher Chung, Darren Boyd, Adeel Akhtar

An Introduction to Slow Horses

In Slow Horses, we meet Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), a senior MI5 agent who’s seemingly given up on everything, especially work colleagues. He leads a ragtag group of disgraced intelligence officers who have made mistakes in their careers that warrant being banished to a dead-end department. These are not your typical suave, cool agents — they’re misfits. River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) is the newest recruit, fresh out of an embarrassing screw-up on a major mission, and now stuck with the “Slow Horses,” who spend their days doing menial tasks with zero urgency.

Then, of course, an actual thing happens — a real threat emerges. Who are you going to call when your regular agents are out of shape, bored, and prone to self-destructive behavior? Jackson Lamb and his crew, of course. The drama unfurls slowly, like the worst team-building exercise you could imagine, but as the stakes rise, the team must reluctantly pull themselves together to stop a dangerous conspiracy.

The writing is sharp, full of biting humor and dry wit, often focused on office politics, career failure, and — inevitably — Jackson Lamb’s unfiltered sarcasm and withering comments. The slow-burn pace sets it apart from other spy thrillers, giving us time to appreciate the deeply flawed characters before they have to face off against much bigger problems than their bruised egos.

Summary

Slow Horses is built around a group of MI5 agents who’ve been relegated to the dreaded Slough House, a department where intelligence officers are sent to rot after they screw up. These are the Slow Horses, and they are everything but heroic. River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) is the latest addition to the team, still stinging from a failed mission that made him the laughing-stock of MI5. He’s idealistic, young, and deeply out of his depth, which, of course, makes him perfect for this underwhelming job. The rest of the team includes a range of eccentric characters, all struggling with their own demons and desperate attempts at redemption.

When a terrorist threat emerges, the Slow Horses are reluctantly dragged into action. They may not have the typical spy skills, but they have something far more dangerous — scrappiness and a willingness to dive headfirst into the messiest of situations. The show is a mix of slow-burning suspense, dry humor, and the kind of character-driven drama that allows us to invest in these deeply flawed yet strangely endearing characters.

Slow Horses offers a cynical yet darkly funny take on British intelligence, avoiding the usual glamorous depictions of spies in favor of a more grounded, often bleak, portrayal of espionage in a similar way to The Shield‘s stripped-back, morally grey depiction of a police-sanctioned task force. However, while the characters in The Shield are tough and unrelenting, the ones in Slow Horses seem borderline depressed and resigned to their predicament at the start of proceedings.

The introduction of a catalysing event, though, proves there’s still fight in them. As the characters galvanize to prove they’re not entirely useless, the show gathers pace and takes viewers on a thrilling, often unpredictable ride. Don’t be fooled into thinking our anti-heroes won’t be seeing any action too – events have a habit of getting VERY out-of-hand, particularly in Season 3.

Check out the Season 1 Opening Titles here: