Critic Reviews

It really is an absolute thrill ride and a joy to watch. Season 2 takes what worked in the first season and expands upon it exponentially. With nearly every episode ending on a cliffhanger, your only complaint may be that you have to wait another week to see what happens next.

The drama makes great use of its London setting, filmed in and around the Barbican, and there are funny little touches that only a British show would include, such as the bungling head of security at MI5’s Regent’s Park headquarters dunking a KitKat Chunky into his cup of tea. As ever, the writing is top quality, particularly the insults.

Forget Bond, forget Bourne — the heroes we need aren’t dapper spies in dinner suits, but dishevelled misfits in curry-stained coats. Slow Horses is the best thriller no-one’s watching, and it’s only getting better.

Season 3 of Slow Horses presents a main story that escalates and derails in the best way possible. Not only does it engagingly involve all characters in the story, but we can also understand and appreciate the personal stakes for everyone, which makes it extremely compelling from beginning to end.

They can be loyal to one another, and even heroic, if not in a way that their bosses will ever recognize. This might make for a depressing real-world status quo, but on Slow Horses, it translates into exemplary television: the most unlikely champions saving the day (and themselves) in ways that only we, the viewers, can truly appreciate.

To its credit, the show manages to do a lot in six episodes: shocking detonations and frantic, drumbeat-scored fight sequences, but also expansive storytelling, detailed worldbuilding, and considered study of what working in intelligence does to people.

Slow Horses is up there with the very best of TV drama.

We’re into series four now and there is no drop in quality. If anything, each series improves slightly on the last. Watching it is pure pleasure. There isn’t a wasted scene or a duff piece of dialogue. Every performance is perfectly calibrated.

We are now on “season” four and it still seems incapable of putting a foot wrong.

Season 5 is the best run of Slow Horses yet. It made me gasp, thrilled me throughout, had me laughing out loud, and included one of the most tonally audacious scenes I've seen on TV in a long time.