Review: Slow Horses, "Missiles" | Season 5, Episode 4

As some of you may know by now, when I have screeners for a show I’m reviewing, my process is to stop after each episode to write the review. This guarantees that I am writing from a perspective identical to that of you, the reader, from a plot and story perspective.

The challenge of this is that sometimes in the middle of the season, I get to a point where I wish that I was able to communicate with invested readers directly. This is one such moment with Slow Horses, because I bounced off of the end of this episode pretty hard, and I wish I had a better grasp of how closely the show has adhered to Mick Herron’s books to this point. Is this a case of the writers veering away from the source material, or is this a case of the source material veering away from what I’d consider to be satisfying narrative development?

For me, without knowing the answer to this question, the Final Destination-esque, Rube Goldberg Machine death for Dennis Gimball was a tonal misfire for Slow Horses. I realize that on some level it’s supposed to be funny: Gimball is revealed in this episode to be a wildly hypocritical opportunist, stoking the flames of hate and prejudice while hiding that he is the son of a Turkish immigrant arrested and deported for grievous bodily harm. Coe spends all that time listening to him pacing in the alley practicing his putrid performance, and so he’s in no rush to rescue him from his attacker (Jaffrey’s massive campaign manager), and doesn’t seem to register that his move down the scaffolding is having some unintended consequences. And while you could argue Gimball deserved his fate to some degree, having it happen in such a random fashion is unsatisfying—sure, it’s another classic River Cartwright screw-up for Slough House, but it takes away agency at what should be an escalating point in the larger narrative.