Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Slow Horses’ Season 3 on Apple TV+, Where Gary Oldman Returns As A Salty, Over-The-Hill Spy With A Few Tricks Left Up His Rumpled Sleeve

Slow Horses returns to Apple TV+ with a third six-episode season and the assurance of a fourth already announced. The grumpy, funny, and intrigue-filled drama comes from a series of novels by Mick Herron – Slow Horses Season 2 adapted Dead Lions, Season 3 three adapts Real Tigers, and so on – and features a gloriously unbound Gary Oldman at the center of a fine cast that also includes Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Sophie Okonedo. Paunchy, dyspeptic, and perpetually sucking on a bent cigarette, Oldman’s Jackson Lamb is everything the typical superspy isn’t. But don’t front: Lamb’s still sharp. And whether it’s tracking espionage double-crosses inside MI5 or foiling Russian sleeper cells of Cold War vintage, Lamb and his collection of ragtag “Slow Horses” intelligence agents have proven quite capable of staying busy. 

SLOW HORSES – SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: Istanbul is beautiful in the warm morning sun. “If you’d rather score points than spend the weekend with me, I’ll post the offer on the embassy notice board.” And as they lie in each other’s arms, Sean Donovan (Sope Dirisu) agrees to come away with Alison Dunn (Katherine Waterston) on the weekend.

The Gist: Sean says his superiors at the British embassy in Turkey don’t know about his romantic relationship with MI5 agent Alison. But they do suspect her of stealing a classified document (codename: Footprint) with the intent to leak. And after she catches him post-coitally searching her place, Alison tearfully gives Sean the boot, only to pull that doc and a burner phone from their hiding place in her giant pot of hummus. A water taxi chase ensues, and a desperate handoff of Footprint to Alison’s unnamed contact, and then we shoot a year forward in time. Sean has surfaced in London, where he’s got eyes on Slough House, the island of misfit MI5 toys presided over by prickish veteran spy Jackson Lamb (Oldman). Slow Horses personnel are designated to be forgotten by the UK’s larger intelligence apparatus. But the shop nevertheless finds itself at the center of another shadowy something, boiling up from the past.

Ruminating over the career missteps that got them there and navigating through Lamb’s latest stormcloud is all part of working at Slough House for MI5 agents River Cartwright (Lowden), Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar), Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), Marcus Longridge (Kadiff Kirwan), and abrasive resident tech guy Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung). But the mountains of moldered banker’s boxes full of supposedly low-importance “Ringo” level intelligence files that clog every corner of their office will have to wait for collation, because Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) has been abducted. All of the Slow Horses know it’s kind, diligent Catherine who’s the real force behind keeping the entirety of their chaotic workplace on track. But it’s not like countering interlopers or locating colleagues who’ve been stuffed into cars is part of their everyday. So what gives?

Lamb had an inkling something was afoot, once he made a goon who was tailing him. (He even surreptitiously pilfered a blade from a kebob shop, just in case things got nasty.) But this? “Why would anyone want to take Catherine?” Louisa wonders. And Lamb just grumbles with certainty. “Maybe they got a death wish.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Winter is prime rewatch time, and all four seasons of the cagey, cutting, award-winning British spy thriller Killing Eve are right there on Roku waiting for you. And while Liaison on Apple TV+ had its share of flaws, there were flashes of chemistry between Eva Green and Vincent Cassel, and a budget that indulged in lots of English and European location shoots. 

Our Take: There’s a scene early on in season three of Slow Horses where a fart greets a stuffy married couple as they sit in a doctor’s office waiting area. Of course it’s Jackson Lamb who’s the flatulator, but it’s the way Gary Oldman peers overtop the couch he’s laying on that’s a stronger indication of Lamb’s character than any reek he emits. This is a guy with eyes in the back of his head, in his mealy strands of gray hair, in the knot of the only necktie he seems to own, in the soles of his threadbare loafers. While the offended party is busy dismissing him, Lamb is cataloging his surroundings, because when you’re a spy, operational awareness is always with you. But the genius in Slow Horses is how it puts Lamb’s battered but still spry smarts into a world far removed from armed up black ops or sleek computer command centers. The environment Lamb inhabits never sees (or smells) him coming, and together with his makeshift team, that’s usually how they manage to win the day.

Slow Horses is also relentlessly acerbic, and that goes for everybody in the cast, from Lamb’s constant verbal bludgeoning to Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana “Second Desk” Taverner, pulling eye rolls and barely tolerating her underlings as MI5’s deputy director-general. (In season three, the series is also setting up more clashes between Taverner and Sophie Okonedo as the intelligence service’s big boss.) Like so much of the spy thriller world, in Slow Horses, nothing is often as it seems. But nor is anything like what you might expect as a viewer.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode beyond a few brief instances of male ass cheek.

Parting Shot: With the entire office on the move, searching for Catherine and retracing her whereabouts, River receives a phone call. “Barbican Bridge, one minute. Or she dies…”

Sleeper Star: Toss-up! Everyone banished to Slough House has issues. But as Shirley Dander and Louisa Guy, Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Rosalind Eleazar each channel a barely contained energy into their characters that sends showers of sparks across every scene they’re in.  

Most Pilot-y Line: Sean uses the opportunity of Catherine’s usual AA meeting to sidle into her life. “Secrets come out,” he tells her. “There will always be a reckoning.” And suddenly, Catherine knows he’s not just talking about alcoholism. 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Slow Horses is sharply written at every twist and turn. Forceful, funny, and conspiratorial, it’s constantly finding new ways into spy thriller dynamics while showcasing the terrific work of its cast and letting Gary Oldman just completely go off as the jaded, aged spy at its center.   

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.