'Slow Horses' Season 4 Kicks off a Double Dose of "Identity Theft" When "A Stranger Comes to Town"
It once looked like Severance would become Apple TV+’s siren’s call to new subscribers, but by the time Season 2 premieres in January 2025, three years will have passed since its first season finale. By contrast, the streamer’s most reliable show, Slow Horses, has consistently delivered a new 6-episode season within 12 months of the previous one concluding; Slow Horses premiered a mere month after Severance, and we’re now on Season 4. In terms of efficiency, there’s no beating it and the consistently entertaining spy romps have earned the last season – which was confident but muddled – a whopping 9 Emmy nominations.
Does Season 4 reveal any cracks in the dependable, gets-the-job-done-and-then-some formula? Not in the opening pair of episodes, which hits its marks with assured precision. Our big bad of the season (teased as a beardy Hugo Weaving) has appeared only briefly by the end of episode two, but the stakes are clear: domestic terror has hit London, and a pre-packaged MI5 spy identity has been used to do it. Judging by a couple of effects-heavy beats and stylish filmmaking, it looks like the Slow Horses budget has been upped – a deserving reward for the misfits of Slough House, where every fuck-up and reject from British Intelligence has something to prove.
Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), tech wizard and the annual winner of Slow Horses’ Most Annoying Character award, has been pranked. River told him they were having a Christmas party at a fast-food chicken joint, but he’s the only one who turned up, which is ostensibly pitiable, but, for Roddy haters like me, it’s cathartic. Anyway, Roddy fails to notice an explosion in the city center, but Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) – who is not First Desk, even after Ingrid Tierney’s deposement – is soon on the scene.
