Review: Slow Horses, "Circle of Life" | Season 6, Episode 1

Welcome back to Episodic Medium's coverage of Apple TV's Slow Horses, which returns for its sixth season as it's renewed for an eighth. As always, this first review is free for all, but subsequent reviews will be exclusively for paid subscribers—to learn more about what we're covering this fall, check out our schedule. You can get 20% off a yearly subscription—our best deal all year—until 9/30 be clicking below.

“When we die, nobody is going to think about us at all”

The first season after you binge to catch up with a show is awash with meaning. You’ve spent a concentrated period thinking about how a show evolved and exploring its themes and characters, and the first “new” season to consume after that is filtered through all of it.

The second season, though, is very different. That was my first thought checking back in with Slow Horses, as Jackson Lamb and his ragtag group of cast-offs prepares for another high-stakes adventure. Last season, my reviews were a treatise of sorts about the show and its storytelling, but I’ll admit I haven’t thought a whole lot about the show in the interim. This is perhaps par for the course when it comes to a show that doesn’t do “cliffhangers,” even if the season-to-season seriality is slightly more significant than something like 24. We’re happy when Slow Horses comes back, but I don’t think I went into this premiere with any feelings whatsoever about what I was going to see.

There’s a freedom in that, obviously, although it’s one specific to those of us who haven’t read the books. I suppose that’s still something I could do, and this season in particular it feels like a bit of a blind spot. As the credits indicate, the show is breaking from its pattern by adapting two books in a single six-episode season, which seems like a tall order without the context of what those books—Joe Country and Slough House—entail. My instinct is to remain in the dark to ensure that I’m not spoiled for where a given story is heading, but I do have to wonder how you take two different stories and layer them on top of each other, and whether that work will become visible as the season wears on.

As it stands right now, the season is driven by one crucial piece of continuity from the previous season and then a new set of (related) problems. That continuity is in Diana Travener, who has finally ascended to first desk at MI5. Kristin Scott Thomas is obviously not our emotional anchor on this world, but her perspective within the Park has been significant, and the biggest development at the end of last season was her finally escaping second desk. For a long time, her situation sort of mirrored that of River, two people who are aspiring to something bigger but stuck in a thankless role instead. As we learn early on in this premiere, River hasn’t gone back to the Park like Lamb promised him, because of course he hasn’t; that’s kind of the whole point of their dynamic. But Diana has managed to find her way to the promotion she’s wanted, but she’s inherited all the problems that come with it, including a thorny situation with shadowy money lenders via the cockroach-like Peter Judd.

By comparison, the story for Slough House doesn’t have the same continuity with the end of last season, because how could it? They don’t have enough importance to have an agenda to disrupt, but this season seems built around the idea they’re more important than anyone realizes. The Slow Horses are under attack on two different fronts by the time the episode ends, and we don’t really have answers for either of them. On the one hand, the Park is overtly trying to sell the building out from under them, whilst covertly erasing them all from the service’s database. The former is pretty blatant, and seems tied to fiscal matters, but Diana’s surprised reaction to their erasure and the fact they aren’t getting paid seems at least slightly earnest. Who benefits from erasing Slough House from existence? And why would you need to keep it a secret if you were just firing them, given that they could do that at any moment?

The fact this is overlapping with an attempt to erase the Slow Horses individually through murders disguised as accidents is perhaps where the plots of the two books converge, and it really does seem like injury added to insult. The plot gives the season a classic “cold open,” as Kyle Soller (I didn’t recognize him until the credits, it’s so unlike Syril) and his colleague seek out and eventually murder a mild-mannered shipping condo entrepreneur who just happens to have been a Slow Horse. While killing off two random former spies we’ve never met doesn’t exactly have the same impact as when Roddy was targeted last season, the idea of River being next on their list (or my first thought was Louisa, who got unceremoniously written off) definitely creates high stakes. There’s also literally nothing for us to go on, which is typical for the show’s mysteries, and matches up with the mysteries on the other side.

It also feels like it has to be related to River’s father showing up at David’s funeral, but that could just as easily be a red herring. As mentioned, there is a touch more seriality here than in a more anthological structure like 24, and Hugo Weaving’s return is a good example of this. David’s off-screen death—although we do get a lovely, probably final scene for Jonathan Pryce—is a major catalyst for River, and no doubt his grief will be a central thread. His father’s return is a trigger for that, but it also serves as a shiny object for the purposes of the larger plot. It’s entirely possible he has nothing to do with any of this, and that his appearance was largely coincidental to those larger plots; however, the connection to past seasons makes it hard to ignore, and the season can use that to its advantage.

It’s a personal dynamic that is doubled by Standish finally discovering that it was Lamb who killed her boss Charles Partner. We know the full details of this of course, and of Partner’s treason, but this is a thematically appropriate time for the news to emerge: just as a rash of spy murders are being framed as accidents, we return to the time Lamb did precisely that. Could it actually be related in some way? That seems unlikely to me, as this seems more like a chance for Standish and Lamb’s relationship to be more central to our story. It’s at this point, though, that we have to ask ourselves the six episode question: is there enough space in this story for two different threats against Slough House, the Park side of the story, and the interpersonal dynamics within Slough House itself?

The thing about Slow Horses, though, is that it never really feels too overstuffed. Sure, it would probably be a bit less burdened if some of these stories converged in convenient ways, and it does mean that we’re unlikely to see much development for characters like Roddy, Coe, and Shirley who seem without a story of their own to speak of (as they say, they’re at work because they have nowhere else to be). However, there is an almost sitcom-esque quality to this motley crew, led by Lamb himself. Some of this is the belching and flatulence, which continues to stay stale in the right ways, but it’s also his shrewdness. Look at how he avoids (outwardly) outing Flyte for telling him about Struan’s death—even if it does come back to her eventually, he’s not flagrant in how he approaches these situations even if belligerence is his primary mode of communication. The delicate command he has over his indelicacies remains the show’s best weapon, and it helps to regulate moments when it feels like too much of one part of the show could overwhelm the rest.

After last season went big with its threat, this one feels much more targeted, and thus strikes me as a season better suited to telling character-driven stories. That seems to be the case here, but high-stakes can sometimes push out those opportunities, so that’s the balancing act in front of us. Had I thought much about any of these concerns before this premiere? No, but the show has a rhythm to it that pulls you back into it, and you can’t claim that there isn’t a lot to be thinking about by the time the season is ⅙ of the way done. 

Stray observations

• A real peak Slow Horses moment with River trying to deliver a eulogy that accepts the lie that David worked for the Department of Transporation while still reflecting the way his job haunted him, all while Lamb loses his shit at how absurd it sounds. I laughed, I felt bad about laughing, it had it all.
• By the time the episode ended, I had forgotten about the dead animal on the road being run over before we meet Struan, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that’s symbolically meaningful here.
• I’m committing to the Red Herring idea for River’s dad as it stands: the shadowy talk of the assassin’s boss combined with that would just be too obvious.
• We did get a bit of a voice cameo from River’s mother, but I’ll be curious who the show cast after she was only briefly discussed back in season one. It may have been in the credits, and I’ll probably know the answer once I’m editing this months later (it is June 25 as I’m writing), but I’ll wait and see.
• Something about the female assassin getting a splinter locking the door so Struan burned to death really embodies what I imagine the writing in the books to be like. If it’s not taken directly from there, I’d be a little surprised.
• Lucian Msamati is also kicking around the Park side of the story, as is Harry Lloyd, so some definitel Game of Thrones vibes moving around here. That said, you should also go watch the former in The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency on HBO, which is now…18 years old. So I’m guessing some of you definitely missed it!
• And welcome back to our coverage of Slow Horses. I’m excited to dive back in, and not just because the huge lead-time on screeners makes it seem like I’m looking into the future. As always, I’ll be writing as I go through screeners, with a bit more urgency because I’m keeping my boyfriend from moving onto the next episode every time. Looking forward to discussing with you all in…two and a half months. Which is now!