Slow Horses (Apple TV)

In general British spy dramas, and have no doubt, Slow Horses is a thoroughly British spy drama, fall into two camps. You have the Bond Camp, everything is glitzy, high tech and high adrenaline, high paced. You have, whether in the book or film style of this, peaks and troughs of tension that are really well suited to the film but work well in a book too. The other is the Smiley Camp, quite slow paced, seedy and the most high-tech thing is usually the photocopier. Sifting through papers and bins is often the height of the action but the stress builds and builds inexorably. Interestingly, both of the authors behind the typonyms are former spies, but one was there during WWII and the other during the Cold War, so perhaps it reflects the way things changed from hot to cold espionage. I’m not aware of a spy novelist coming out of the social media iteration of spy craft, although I’m sure there will be one, if there isn’t one already. I wonder what they will look like?

While you can argue that Villanelle (season 1 of the TV show and certainly the book) smashes those styles together, it is Eve living in the Smiley Camp while Villanelle lives in the Bond Camp. In Slow Horses MI5 is shown in both camps. “The Park” is for active, high-flying agents on the fast track to success and falls into the Bond Camp. Slough House is for the titular Slow Horses. These are people who have screwed up in ways that means they can’t quite be sacked but that they’re being shunted into a dead-end job that doesn’t matter and has no prospects. In the first episode we see them doing things like checking parking tickets from nine years ago for possible clues for example. They’re being encouraged to quit by their charming boss who tells them how useless they are, frequently.

Against this background we see our protagonist first blow things, so he’s sent to Slough House, then, some time later, doing one of these exciting jobs. He and his partner are doing routine surveillance of a now washed up and discredited journalist who used to have links to far right extremists. His partner is doing fancy stuff, face-to-face and cloning his laptop’s hard drive while he goes through the bins.

While this might be fun to watch in its own right, events take a turn that’s borderline plausible. A (fictitious) far right group kidnaps a British Asian student and is going to behead him at dawn the next day, on a livestream. Obviously this is not good… and suddenly this washed up journalist is a lot more interesting to MI5. He had links in and around the group and is making phone calls to old friends.

If you’re used to spy thrillers some of the twists you see won’t surprise you, maybe all of them, but a few came out of left-field for me and all of them, expected or not, felt sensible and blended together into a pleasing whole.

I didn’t know going in, but it became fairly obvious at some point that this was an adaptation of a book. For me that was a good thing, YMMV. While I don’t hate the US TV “writers room” approach, and we have four writers credited here with the adaptation, there was still a clear, guiding vision, a consistency to both the story and the characters throughout that rarely emerges from a writers room until you have several seasons under your belt. They also kept the same director throughout. In a show where you’re deliberately being fed partial truths and you’re never sure who, if anyone, is trustworthy that sense that you can rely on consistency of writing, so that little oddness you saw is not just a different writer trying something new with the characters. It’s not a new director trying to bring something new out of the cast. Those things can be great in a sitcom, or in any show eight seasons in, but here NOT having them was really important. While I haven’t read the books that vision came through and I really appreciated it.

I know spy dramas aren’t for everyone. Parts of this also feel really British, which is also not for everyone. But I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bechdel Test: Pass. I’ll be honest, I’m not 100% sure every episode passes. But the main cast is about 1/3 female and most of them get to talk to each other in a lot of the episodes. It certainly felt like it passed.

Ko Test; Pass. Here we’re looking at Louisa, who is I think the only WOC we see routinely, but she talks in multiple scenes in every episode.

Russo Test: Fail. There are a few characters who are coded as gay men, and you could certainly write some great fanfic about Diana and Ingrid (Deputy-Director and Director of MI5 respectively). But no one is out and proud, all the relationships we actually see are heterosexual ones. We might see more in season two.