SLOW HORSES S4 Review: Grungy Spies, Dynamic Suspense

There is aging like fine wine, and then there is aging like Jackson Lamb, perpetually grumpy and disheveled like a load of dirty laundry.

Slow Horses S4
The first three seasons are now streaming on Apple TV+. The first episode of Season 4 premieres globally Wednesday, September 4. New episodes will debut every Wednesday. I've seen all 24 episodes across four seasons.

Gary Oldman leans into his age as Jackson Lamb. Oldman is now 66 years old, but Jackson Lamb looks like death warmed over. He is charged with oversight of Slough House, a unit of MI5 -- Britain's domestic counterintelligence service -- where reprobates and rejects from the service are consigned to live out their days until death or resignation or retirement.

In spite of its grungy, shambling appearance, and the vastly imperfect characters who inhabit it, what has been remarkable about the series is the high quality that it established in its first season and has maintained throughout. Credit starts with the Slough House series by British writer Mick Herron. First published in 2010, eight novels and five novelettes in the series have been published so far.

Produced in the UK, where a typical season is often six episodes (or less), Slow Horses benefits from this model to the full. The primary emphasis is on the season-long narrative, and every episode runs less than 60 minutes, which means that, despite its ironic title, nothing in the show runs slow; really, it's more like galloping horses.

Rarely is any motion or any apparent deviation wasted, yet it never feels rushed. Any side trip is used as an opportunity to illuminate individual characters, fill in back story, or explain what's happening -- on the run, as it were. Listen quick, you've got to catch up. The twists and turns are inevitable, rather than arbitrary, and make perfect sense in hindsight.

I've written about Season 1 and Season 2, but didn't have an opportunity to write about Season 3 last year. Rewatching it in preparation for Season 4, I was struck again by the show's propulsive energy, which continually feels like it's coming out of nowhere. I'd already seen it, after all, and thought it might bore me a little to watch it again, but nope! In reality, it deepened my appreciation at how well every twist and turn was set up, with great dexterity and subtle mastery.

Gary Oldman remains a commanding screen presence; even in quiet repose, it's difficult to take your eyes off him, even if he does look like a homeless person who has not taken a shower or changed his clothes in more than a year and must smell to high heaven. His character is brilliantly deductive and is always the first to figure something out or suss out what is really happening below the surface. He doesn't waste any words on anything like commendation to his workers or to himself.

Jack Lowden returns as a younger agent, River Cartwright, whose grandfather (Jonathan Pryce) was a legendary agent. (Pryce also returns.) Much of this year's story revolves around River, and the actor looks great and is convincing for all the terrific physicality required of the role, as well as the emotional quotient to flesh out the story.

Kristen Scott Thomas also returns as Diana Taverner, MI5's brittle and fear-inspiring second in command, who we may have thought would have ascended to the head (or 'First Desk') of the service after the events in season 3. Instead, she remains in her position, and now must deal with a new boss, Claude Whelan (James Callis), who supplies much evidence to the idea that in big companies, less-qualified men fail upward.

Other returning characters include 'slow horses' intense Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar), obnoxious tech wiz Ho (Christopher Chung), family man/gambler Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan), and angry drug user Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards). A tidy new admin assistant, Moira (Joanna Scanlan), has replaced the veteran Standish (Saskia Reeves), who quit after the events in season 3, but remains a presence on the series. Another reject, the perpetually hooded Coe (Tom Brooke) lurks in the background at Slough House.

Speaking of lurking, other new characters include the mysterious Frank (Hugo Weaving) and the efficient Flyte (Ruth Bradley), a key MI5 agent.

It may sound like a lot of characters in the summary above, but each one plays a different role; they are not interchangeable. One of the hallmarks of the series is that each character has a unique chemistry with the other characters, causing the cast of characters to shift and adjust as new people are introduced.

If you've watched the first three seasons, you know that not every character survives every season. Those who continue living are informed by the actions of those who are gone; their losses accumulate and affect each survivor differently. In this and other aspects, the series feels authentically grounded in reality, even while it supplies an abundance of gun battles and physical melees and running people and car chases and pedestrian pursuits and big explosions and bloody beatings and savage deaths.

So, yes, it's a good, dynamic show. It may start at a slow trot, but quickly gains momentum until it's a frenzied race to the unexpected conclusion.