'Slow Horses' Does Not Stop For a "Penny for Your Thoughts"

For a spy thriller, Slow Horses is paced strangely. As a TV thriller, you can’t fault how it moves: each of Mick Harron’s books is split into the UK-standard six sub-hour episodes (often under 45 minutes), and they clip through plot turns and character beats like nobody’s business, which is one of the main reasons it’s so easy for newcomers to get invested and catch up to the newest season. But for a show about espionage, it has a peculiar rhythm: rarely is there ever a time jump or de-escalation of energy after the first couple of inciting incidents; more or less every character is on the move from the outset, and they don’t stop until the evil plan has been thwarted. It’s a formula that has, for four seasons now, secured an eager, ever-growing audience – but it eschews a lot of the usual pleasures of the down-and-dirty spy genre.

Slow Horses is not interested in long, dogged spy work, the stultifying pauses between bursts of suppressed action, or a numb, pervading sense that everyone might be wasting their time. It’s more spy fiction of the James Bond variety, a propulsive thriller dressed with espionage and intelligence tropes and the occasional subversion, but downsized to grimy London streets and gentrified coffee shops.

None of this is meant to disparage the quite admirable entertainment Slow Horses is so intent on delivering. However, as you reach the midpoint of any season (most noticeably the last two), it’s hard to feel like we’ve been given something substantial or that all of the crucial plot details and complications won’t be packed into one modest-length episode in the back half of the season.