{"id":20018,"date":"2025-09-16T14:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T14:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/20018\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T14:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T14:38:09","slug":"spy-series-widens-its-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/20018\/","title":{"rendered":"Spy series widens its spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI want what I always want,\u201d Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), perpetually the smartest guy in the room, plainly tells the head of MI5 (James Callis\u2019 Claude Whelan), perpetually the dumbest, in the closing minutes of the upcoming season of Slow Horses<\/a>, \u201c\u2026to be left in utter fucking peace.\u201d The more things change, the more they remain the same on this show. And there\u2019s a certain comfort in knowing that whatever is thrown at the outcast agents employed at Slough House\u2014new threats include a racist demagogue, a mass shooter, a group that\u2019s bombing penguins at the London Zoo, and another that\u2019s causing car hoods to burst into flames in the name of climate change\u2014the Apple TV+ series always goes back, essentially, to the same playbook: The city faces catastrophe, Lamb & co. are told to not mettle, they do anyway, and then save the day with seconds to spare. Toss in some smart shit-talking and narrative go-tos, like immediately following tragedy (say, a massacre during an ugly election) with a heavy dose of silliness (say, a jackass annoyingly and joyously dancing to Robert Palmer\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cSimply Irresistible\u201d on his way to work) and you have a show with the twisty, spycraft storytelling bones and comedic chemistry to keep audiences coming back for more.<\/p>\n

Now, is it incredulous that everyone still underestimates the Slow Horses time and city-saving time again? Sure. But that is part of the baked-in charm of this series, which, to be fair, does throw the occasional fatal curveball to keep audiences on their toes and the stakes high by killing off an endearing character like Marcus Longridge (Kadiff Kirwan) in season four. Speaking of, that season is a tough act to follow. The series felt like it got notably deeper last year, with River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) dealing with some screwed-up daddy issues and Lamb, of all people, showing the slightest hints of compassion. \u201cHe always gives the impression that he doesn\u2019t care, and he probably cares more than most,\u201d Oldman said of his character<\/a> in an interview with The A.V. Club about that standout batch of episodes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At first, this season of Slow Horses struggles to live up to its last. The familiar banter and caustic put-downs from Lamb are still there and firing as fast and as amusingly as ever. But the juice of this particular tale (which is based on London Rules, the fifth novel in Mick Herron\u2019s series) feels, while certainly timely, with a politician played by Ted Lasso\u2018s Nick Mohammed vowing to \u201cMake London Londerful Again,\u201d thinner and, dramatically, less emotionally complex. Some of that is bound to happen when you take characters who have mostly been on the back burner and move them closer to the front, like Roddy Ho (a very funny Christopher Chung), that aforementioned dancing idiot\/Slough House hacker who finds himself at the center of some international payback. He is exactly the kind of guy who\u2019d say Tom Cruise\u2019s character in Magnolia \u201ctaught me a lot about women\u201d and refer to himself as \u201cDragon Slayer, the Human Tripod, the True King Of Gondor\u201d in front of MI5 top brass (Kristin Scott Thomas\u2019 Diana Taverner).<\/p>\n

Slow Horses season 5 trailer features a ticking clock (and lots of snark)<\/a>Slow Horses races forward with season 7 renewal<\/a><\/p>\n

Similarly, Lamb\u2019s meek, longtime\u2014and long-suffering\u2014secretary Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) and not-so-meek agent Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), who\u2019s still beating herself up over Marcus\u2019 death, also get more to do, teaming up to try and thwart an assassination. Even last season\u2019s Silent Hoodie Guy (Tom Brooke\u2019s J.K. Coe) moves a bit into the spotlight, becoming the reluctant partner of River and saying actual human words out loud\u2014to the point that the latter begs, \u201cJust fucking shut up, okay?\u201d This many seasons in, the show needs to do some of this maneuvering so as not to drive home the same central characters\u2019 issues and burn out. It\u2019s just that they\u2014again, understandably\u2014don\u2019t hit like, for instance, River\u2019s bond with his dementia-addled grandfather (played by Jonathan Pryce), a relationship that largely fades into the background this time around.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t make any of this less delightful to watch, maybe just less fulfilling. And, on that note, it\u2019s worth singling out creator (and Emmy winner<\/a>) Will Smith, who\u2019s leaving the show<\/a> and managed to deliver five consistently entertaining seasons of TV in only three-and-a-half years. \u201cRight now, we\u2019re at DEFCON shit, fuck, bollocks, and scramble,\u201d Lamb spits out in the back half of this season. And no doubt, the Slow Horses will be in that very specific, precarious spot soon enough, with the season ending, per usual, with an energetic teaser of the next that\u2019s hard not to get excited about.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Slow Horses season five premieres September 24 on Apple TV+\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI want what I always want,\u201d Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), perpetually the smartest guy in the room, plainly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-20018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}