It starts sexily enough. A strapping and improbably named M15 agent, River Cartwright, played by Jack Lowden (Dunkirk, the imminent Benediction), wearing fine tailoring and an earpiece, is staking out a would-be suicide bomber at Stansted airport. He has eyes on who he thinks is his man, only to learn, maybe too late, that the real suspect, the one with the bomb in his backpack, is actually heading for that most exclusive of East Anglian transport links, the Stansted Express. River makes a dash for it, racing through the bowels of the airport – including, thrillingly, the area behind the flappy rubber curtain in baggage reclaim – and living out every commuter’s dream of shoving people off escalators while shouting “MOVE! MOVE!” But can he get to the target in time?
This, it must be said, is as glam as the first episode of Apple TV+ spy series Slow Horses, based on the acclaimed Mick Herron thriller of the same name, is going to get. River’s stake-out does not play out as hoped – in fact, is nothing short of disastrous – and he finds himself banished to Slough House, a kind of limbo for operatives who have, in some minor or major way, fucked up. Slough House is not, in fact, in Slough, but is so nicknamed because it is so far away from the important MI5 business, overseen by the terrifying Diana Taverner (Kristen Scott Thomas, naturally), that it might as well be. Instead, it occupies a rickety upstairs office in Moorgate, the door of which can only be opened by a shoulder-barge, and is populated by a gaggle of demotivated deadbeats overseen by another improbably named agent, Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) whose primary contribution to the first two episodes is farting.
Of course the six-episode show, which is smartly written by Will Smith (Veep, Back), and engagingly directed by James Hawes (Black Mirror, Penny Dreadful), has a pacey plot which doesn’t take long to emerge. River’s first task in his new workplace is to go through bin bags belonging to a seedy journalist (Paul Hilton) who seems to be hiding something and may be in some way connected to the kidnapping of a young Muslim student (Antonio Aakeel) whose beheading, according to the threats made by his anonymous captors, is imminent. River needs little encouragement to start some extracurricular snooping, prompting a ripple of other spooks, including young hot-shot Sid (Olivia Cooke), washed up at Slough House for reasons that no one can quite work out, to have to keep tabs on him.
However what is most striking about Slow Horses – and also, given that it’s a thriller, quite ingeniously perverse – is just how boring it makes the whole spy game look. The operatives’ evenings are not spent sipping shaken martinis in exotic locales, but necking sad pints in a local boozer to escape marital and social woes, as two of Cartwright’s new colleagues, Min (Dustin Demri-Burns) and Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar) find themselves doing in episode two. And that’s assuming they even go home at all, a custom to which Jackson Lamb – whose revolting corporeal presence Oldman obviously has great fun portraying – appears to have taken the Bartleby the Scrivener approach: he prefers not to. This is professional drudgery of the highest – or lowest – order.
Beyond the dreariness of the primary characters’ day jobs, it’s hard to remember London itself looking quite so grim on screen. There’s not a bowler-hatted gent nor a glittering tourist attraction to be spotted: the streets are grey, the light is flat. There’s rubbish. And buses. And it rains. Perverse as it may seem, the familiarity of it all is actually quite refreshing. What is also perverse is that, for all the oppositional stance Slow Horses seems to be taking to, say, the glamorous mode of espionage practised by James Bond, it’s hard not to watch Lowden – who looks good in a dark suit and brings a surprising charisma to River – without thinking that hmm, maybe he’d make a good one. It might be a long shot, but as Slow Horses reveals over the course of the series, people can be full of surprises.
The first two episodes of Slow Horses are released tonight on Apple TV+, with subsequent episodes released every Friday
Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.
