Slow Horses returns for season 6 with Circle Of Life its opening episode. Here’s our review, as early signs are things are back on form. Minor spoilers lie ahead. You a fan of the film Die Hard 2? I know it’s not many people’s first – or indeed second – choice in the Die Hard ... Slow Horses season 6 episode 1 review | Celebrating fancy wireless printers
Slow Horses returns for season 6 with Circle Of Life its opening episode. Here’s our review, as early signs are things are back on form.
Minor spoilers lie ahead.
You a fan of the film Die Hard 2? I know it’s not many people’s first – or indeed second – choice in the Die Hard saga, but I’ve always admired how it opens with antagonist William Sadler practicing his moves before the action really kicks in. Standing, bereft of clothing, and flexing his muscles. All in a sequence that bears no relevance whatsoever to what follows in the movie itself. More action movies should start the same way.
Slow Horses series 6 episode 1 opens with a slightly lower rent version of that. The moves we see practiced in this particular opening aren’t used in what follows either. Also in terms of spot the difference, there’s no Bruce Willis in a vest, and no Christmas. I’d best actually get more to the point.
I’m broadly in line with the consensus that Slow Horses has been the best drama on British television over the past five years or so, particularly off the back of a four series run whose standards, and ability to make London look interesting and undiscovered, rarely dropped.
Series six, running for six episodes, picks up after the show’s first wobble.
In much the same way that a mid-standard Steven Spielberg movie is still better than most filmmakers can manage, so Slow Horses series five was decent, better than a lot of the blah that’s found on streaming, but a notable drop. Of course, given the famed production schedule of the show, this latest run was already pretty much done and dusted when the last season screened.
Series six starts a lot tighter. I’ve not read Mick Herron’s source novels, and two of them form the basis for the story here (every other season to date has used a single book as its source). But it looks like we’re getting the long overdue ‘cut them loose’ episode, as the Slow Horses themselves – old and new – are looking like the central target. You can’t have any self-respecting spy franchise without getting to this bit.
I managed to piece together that the Horses were in trouble by the fact two agents were bumped off in the episode, the first temporarily locked into a burning shipping container, the second drowned after being pushed in a canal. Heck, there was an even a dead animal in the road at the start. Everything’s deliberate here, and the new series has kicked off with quite the body count.
The final body to consider? Jonathan Pryce’s David Cartwright has finally passed. This already has knock-ons. Jack Lowden’s River, underused last series, has extra family baggage to deal with, not least when his ruthless father pops up again. Memories of Hugo Weaving previously in the show suggest this is, er, not good news for River.
Furthermore, it means that the subsequent funeral – considerably enlivened when Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb gets the giggles – is as much smoke and mirrors as everything else.
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My favourite moment of a tense episode though is Saskia Reeves’ Catherine walking around Molly’s office, and jealously lusting after the multi-function office printer. Wireless, too. Fancy!
Inevitably, lots of pieces are being moved around the board here, as you’d expect from a series opener. Back at The Farm, Kristin Scott Thomas’ First Desk has a guided tour to tolerate (again, presumably relevant) and the return of not disgraced Peter Judd, now raising questions about the money problem that helped see him toppled.
It’s interesting that here’s a show which doesn’t mind expecting an audience to do a bit of homework if they’ve not seen every episode to date. In an era where streaming shows tend to explain everything at least twice to mitigate audience attention issues, there’s something delightfully old fashioned about assuming people are actually paying attention.
The big question for The Park is the growing threat to the Horses. Notwithstanding a beaten up estate agent, and people throwing darts at each other, the innocuous removal of the Slow Horses team from the government payroll is, of course, the massive clanging alarm bell.
Again, nothing’s accidental, and we’re told it’s been ordered from the top. Just who the ‘top’ actually is, though, is open to some degree of debate. But they got a whole Mission: Impossible movie out of a team being disavowed and the hunted down. Who knows? We may be in for similar mischief here.
It already feels a little bit smaller than the political battle and shooting that underpinned last series, and that could and should be to the show’s benefit. But given I’ve made a rule with myself to write these reviews as I’m going along, fully expect me to look an idiot in a few episodes’ time.
It’s a welcome return for the show, then, and a confident start. But with Netflix’s excellent Legends now nipping at its heel, others are finally starting to close the gap a bit. Slow Horses no longer has the playing field to itself of laugh out loud moments alongside finger-gnawing tension. So far, it’s more than up for the fight.
Up and running, then. I’m just off to take my clothes off to do some unnecessary flexing of my muscles.
