Slow Horses

In adapting the novels, here’s what the show gets right:

1. Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb. Not only a perfect match between actor and character, a so-obvious-it’s-inspired choice given Oldman’s previous role as Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

2. The rest of the casting in season 1. Jack Lowden’s River is a would-be cross between Bond and Bourne, except he’s a bit of a doofus, self-regarding, a screw-up, and still in the service owing mainly to nepotism. The rest fit their roles perfectly, whether Kristin Scott Thomas, Christopher Chung, Saskia Reeves, Freddie Fox, or Dustin Demri-Burns. Give the casting director a raise.

3. The general atmosphere and vibe: the former within the world of the story, the latter put off by the same. Slough House is dark, dank, and cranky; Lamb is genuinely embittered and misanthropic; redeeming qualities are few and far between; you really believe this is an island for MI5’s misfit toys. The vibe thus produced is simultaneously cool (spies!) and bitterly funny (losers!), placing the audience always on the ironic edge between cheering on the slow horses and laughing at their incompetence. And it’s hard to believe when actual danger and daring-do come along and rope these has-beens and second-rates into the game.

Here’s what the show gets wrong:

1. The final episode of season 1. In the book, not only do we get to live inside Ahmed’s head as a character in his own right. For all the slow horses do to find him, much less to save him, Ahmed rescues himself. All the Lamb/River action is at Regent’s Park. The others try to track Ahmed from a deli or coffee shop. But the kidnapping and attempted execution are botched due to a combination of foolishness (Lady Di), in-fighting (the two remaining kidnappers), and shrewdness (Ahmed). The slow horses are nowhere to be seen! That is, in the book. In the show, Lamb and River and Min and Louisa speed down the highway to find Ahmed and, eventually, save him—more or less on camera! Give me a break. It’s absurd TV high jinx that lights the subtext of the show on fire. All of a sudden we’ve got real spies doing real Bond–Bourne–Jack Ryan stuff, rather than the back-ups to the back-ups accidentally stumbling upon observing some spy stuff … on their laptop screen.

2. The second season is a mess from start to finish. Marcus and Shirley are both duds—whether as written or as acted, it’s unclear. The plot of the book is so complicated that the writers attempted both to simplify it and to make it more closely connected to Lamb and the slow horses, but the result is a story impossible to follow by anyone unfamiliar with the novel and finally nonsensical on its face. I still can’t believe that the finale opts to leave both the “evil pilot mom” and the “cicadas” plot threads utterly dangling, unaddressed. Including the bald man in the action, making Roddy an action hero with his laptop, putting Lamb and Popov in the same room, flying River to the OB’s house to save the day … once again, the finale is absurd, on its own terms, while also being a denial of the whole point, ethos, and thematic heart of the show.

3. I’m also unsure about the wisdom of beginning to reveal, as soon as the season 1 finale, secrets about Lamb, the OB, Partner, and their interlocked past that might be best reserved for later. That is, the shock of some of their secrets needs time to become shocking. If we learn them more or less up front, then they’re just part of who the characters are, rather than revelations that complicate what we thought we know.

4. The second season also ups the “feel good” schmaltz a couple notches compared to the first season. It feels the need, in other words, to give the good guys a heart, rather than to keep them the losers they are. Lamb in particular basically just becomes a grand master spy, running his joes, rather than a cynical drunk who can’t spare a single second’s thought for another person’s feelings—especially if that person is someone he cares about. I hope, in the next season, they have the wisdom to drop the warmth and return to the cold the way it should be.