welcome back, Slow Horses
season-premiere recap for the dozens of us watching
Call me a middle-aged father, but there is something about spy shows that simply gets me going. Stake-outs, car chases, red herrings, personal lives gradually falling into disarray: I will sit on my little couch and watch.1 Last fall, I inhaled all four seasons of Slow Horses in about a week and immediately recommended it to my middle-aged father. And no, as much as I want to, I’m not going to delve into Eldest Daughter Discourse.
For months now, I have been begging asking the people in my life to watch this show. To no avail.
Well, the newest season started last week and I for one was thrilled to once again fall into the world of MI5’s most dysfunctional and mediocre agents.2 I live for Gary Oldman’s alcoholism and deeply wrinkled trench coat, Jack Lowden’s increasingly resigned forehead, and Kristin Scott Thomas’s elegant and constant disappointment. Much like Marie Kondo, I love mess.
I did think that, because my personal pleas were falling on deaf ears and because Apple TV does this cute thing wherein they refuse to dedicate any funds to marketing their own shows unless they are called Severance, my dad and I and maybe a retired couple somewhere in Yorkshire were the only ones watching this show.
It turns out, however, that a lot of you are also involved in this Slow Horses project. And so: I have decided to start a recap series. There are six episodes, so there will be six recaps. This is the first. And they said I wouldn’t use math in my day-to-day. Look at us now.
In all fairness, I should’ve rewatched season four before starting the new season, because I’d forgotten the proper extent of the shambles our little team was left in last year. Everyone in Slough House is mentally unwell in a way that is somehow both familiar, worrying, and comforting. Ah, to live in unprecedented times.
We start with what we can only assume is an Andrew Tate disciple having breakfast in an apartment that can really only be described, and here I’m being kind, as a hovel. In the background we can see a poster of a man dog-walking a woman, right before Tate Jr. here picks up a package from a nondescript white van outside said apartment (sorry, flat). This can only be good news, I assume!
Well, no. Next thing we know, Tate Jr. is gunning down not only the lovely, soft-spoken volunteer campaigning for the incumbent mayor, but also everyone else in the little commercial plaza. Before he can make his escape to, I don’t know, drink raw milk in someone’s mom’s basement, Tate Jr. is taken out by a sniper whose getaway vehicle is the same white van from which Tate Jr. retrieved his gun earlier that morning. The lesson here: there are no friends in the manosphere.
Can I just say, there is something very disconcerting about watching a mass shooting, even a fictional one, outside of the States? I don’t think I’ve become desensitized to them occurring here, but I have become accustomed to the reactions thereto, and to see a British reaction to a mass shooting as opposed to an American one ... it made me sit up. There is a level of surprise that, in the States, we no longer seem to possess. I wish we still had access to that feeling of shock. Maybe things would be different then. Maybe we wouldn’t wake up to such horrifying news of senseless death every day.
Ah, Roddy Ho. I appreciate that he’s the first of the core team we’re reintroduced to. There’s an endearing touch to his patheticness. He just wants to be cool so badly. So, so badly. The outfit, the headphones, the dancing, the evident ogling of women in the middle of the street. And yet, not the worst kind of toxicity. There are levels to the interlocking axes of misogyny and loneliness, thank you very much.
Ho is, and I cannot emphasize enough, not looking both ways before crossing the street, which means that he does very nearly get run over by a white van that may or may not be the same white van from earlier in the episode (the suspicious vehicle industrial complex did a lot of lobbying for this episode, I’ll say that) before being saved by one Shirley Dander, who is convinced Ho was being targeted.
Shirley is not taking Marcus’s loss from the end of last season well. To put it another way: it’s not like she started with all her screws tightly fastened, but our girl is more unhinged than usual. She spends most of the episode concerned that someone is trying to kill Ho, and trying to persuade Gary Oldman, whatever his character’s name is (Jackson Lamb), that their colleague is in danger, ergo they are all in danger. Is she paranoid following Marcus’s death, or is someone actually trying to murder the rejects? Well, as Jackson Lamb seems to privately think, although to Shirley he expresses little but skepticism and mockery: porque no los dos?
It takes almost 13 minutes into the episode, by the way, for Jack Lowden aka River Cartwright to pop into our screens. And, if I may: he is looking ragged. Giving Jackson Lamb a run for his money. A shell of a man. This is not a look that most men can pull off, to be clear, but Mr. Saoirse Ronan is not most men, so it does unfortunately work for him. He’s carrying a handful of very full Tesco bags up the stairs for Louisa’s farewell/have a good mental health break party. Well done, Louisa. I think everyone should at one point take a mental health break from work, because we are all, and I mean that with no exceptions whatsoever, mentally unwell. Not enough therapy in the world, quite frankly.
River, who at the end of season four had to put his ailing grandfather in a home and whose biological father was revealed to be CIA-turned-mercenary Frank Harkness (lovely man), has developed a bit of an attitude problem, making him rude to our on-the-brink girl Shirley, as well as to never-hurt-anyone Catherine, and indirectly (see also: deservedly), to Ho.
In her yen to protect him from what she believes is certain death, after work Shirley follows Ho to a club where, she is shocked to see, he is accompanied by an objectively hot woman. Catherine, who followed Shirley, calls River to be all like “hey, requesting back-up, I don’t wanna go into the club,” which I mean, same. By so doing, though, Catherine interrupts River’s conversation with Louisa, who’s telling him that, plot twist, she is not coming back to Slough House, to the service, she is done with it all. Again, we return to our week’s sub-theme: well done, Louisa.
River is angry (generally, but also specifically about the fact that his best office bud will be gone) and manages to make the revelation about himself. When Louisa tells him that she wants to “feel things again,” he’s like, ah, she means feel things about me, and proceeds to kiss her. This, judging by Louisa’s utter lack of reciprocity and the way she asks “what the fuck was that” (sic), is a mistake.
They have to leave it there as Mr. Saoirse Ronan does indeed head to the club, where he meets Shirley and they briefly unite in the sense of disbelief brought about by seeing Ho out and about with an attractive woman. Shirley, who as we’ve discussed is unwell in a myriad ways, proceeds to jump onto a man who she thought was wielding a knife—reader ... ‘twas a mere bottle, being used in its customary, functional fashion.
Shirley and River have a little tiff in the club bathroom (we’ve all been there) before going their separate ways. When Ho and his mystery girl leave, Shirley, never one to eschew violence if she can help it, knocks a delivery guy off his bike to follow their cab. Lo and behold, and frankly to no one’s true surprise: the beautiful, power-ponytail wearing woman is, indeed, playing Roddy Ho. A-las.
In the meantime, by the way: everyone is trying to figure out the story/man behind the mass shooting. Sorry to have done the American thing and left that bit in the background, but in my defense, so did the episode.
We’re also introduced to the mayoral candidates: the incumbent, Nick Mohammed’s Zafar Jaffrey (safe to assume, inspired at least in part by current London mayor Sadiq Khan) and Christopher Villiers’ Dennis Gimball (a charming mélange of Boris Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene).3 As the mass shooter is revealed to be a Gimball fan (shock of shocks), we’re led to believe that the event will have serious electoral and political repercussions.
God, I love this show. I think we’re off to a fairly strong start with this season premiere. What with Tate Jr., Louisa and River’s last conversation, and the Met cop(per) who keeps trying to inappropriately flirt with Emma Flyte as they investigate a mass shooting, the season is setting up to discuss the personal and societal ramifications of toxic masculinity. And while a lot of people won’t like that, I believe the show is up to the task.
Does the next episode drop in a few hours? Sure! Is the plan to publish these recaps closer to the episode release dates in the future? Yes!
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Not for nothing, I am indeed rewatching The Americans, which is, if I may remind you, a perfect show. A perfect show. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys indeed deserved to fall in love as a reward for their performances.
Do not come for me, this is the entire premise of the series!
Nick Mohammed will be a familiar face to those of us who (tragically) watched Ted Lasso—welcome back, Nathan Shelley!
Huge SH fan! Loved the recap! Keep 'em coming! Also: curious as to whether you've read any of the Mick Herron books? I tried, and couldn't get into them.
Oooh I can't wait for more recaps! This show makes me so happy.