Slow Horses Review

The premise is a joke and the show is not. Slough House is where the intelligence service sends the officers it cannot fire, and Jackson Lamb, played by Oldman with a relish that is the performance of his television career, runs it as a slum while remaining the most dangerous person in every room. Each season adapts one novel in six tight episodes, which is the correct length and one that almost no streaming drama observes, and the plots are proper espionage stories with real stakes and real bodies.

The writing is savage and funny, the ensemble around Oldman is uniformly excellent, and Kristin Scott Thomas as the service's ambitious deputy is the perfect foil. It is shot with a grey, damp London realism that suits it. The seasons vary a little in the strength of their central plot, and the show has a fondness for a last minute twist that occasionally overreaches. It is the standard by which the genre is now measured.