Slow Horses (season two)

Season two of Slow Horses doesn’t quite maintain the split between the two styles of British spy drama as evenly as season one, it’s heavier into the Slough House side of the balance than the Regent’s Park side. However, just as we had a plausible story of modern Britain in season one, we have a somewhat plausible story here. It’s centred around long-term KGB sleeper agents and we know the KGB did do this sort of thing, I’m not sure enough of them are still fit and active, and ideologically engaged, to do what we’ve got here, but it’s not impossible. That said, most of the people who are doing the heavy lifting, the deeply involved things reveal that they have motives that I felt worked.

We’ve got a couple of new cast members (we lost Sid and Struan in season one, so we get replacements) who manage to have plenty to do, and one of whom shows why they were sent to Slough House early on. The other not so much, which raises alarm bells after season one of course.

We have, as we had last season, a tiny writers room, and that really tight continuity of style and characterisation shows and flows nicely. That tightness of writing leads to some lovely character moments but I can’t really go into them because each would be a spoiler, although some are relatively minor; I’ll let them come to you with full impact still. I think it’s right that every returning significant character gets one of these moments, and some of the new characters get them too. In six episodes, that’s pretty impressive, there are ten and even 22 episode series that don’t manage it, with smaller core casts than we have here.

I thoroughly enjoyed season one of Slow Horses. But I was gripped by season two in a way I didn’t really expect. Perhaps it’s my age or something, but although analytically the story reaches here seemed bigger than in season one, emotionally I engaged better. KGB sleeper agents worked better than a far-right group and a false flag operation for me, although I’m sure far-right groups that think about kidnapping Asian students and killing them exist, and I know the Met have certainly conducted false flag operations, I’m sure MI5 have too. Whatever the cause, this season really hit me even more fully than the last and I’m really looking forward to the next two seasons.

Bechdel Test: Pass. Although there are some siloed characters, Second Desk basically only talks to three characters, and they’re all men for example, we’ve got three women in Slough House and two who are pretty much present together throughout. They don’t necessarily talk a lot, but they do talk and it’s hardly ever about men. There are other pairs of women around as well who have passing conversations at various points.

Ko Test: Pass. This is basically down to Louisa, although Marcus, one of the new faces is a POC too, so it’s not all white faces. But the Ko test is looking for WOC.

Russo Test: Fail. You can make an argument that Catherine is actually ace, but it doesn’t fit comfortably for me. We don’t get to see the sexualities of Shirley and Marcus but if we do know them, they’re straight. Or at least bi and passing.