Slow Horses manages the incredible task of being a human redemption story, a genuinely funny comedy, and above all, a terrific spy saga.

Slow Horses shifts into high gear with grisly twists aplenty. [11 - 24 Apr 2022, p.7]

A show like this needs to find the right rhythm, a balance between character and espionage plotting, and it’s almost dead perfect here, at least when the show focuses on the Slow Horses—long scenes with the kidnappers, especially in later episodes, feel like they could have been shortened a bit, to be fair. It helps to have a cast who completely understood the assignment.

A grimily authentic espionage yarn populated by a bunch of funny, intriguing “losers, misfits and boozers”, as they’re described in the lyrics of the wonderfully atmospheric Mick Jagger theme song.

As these competitive, cynical spymasters keep changing the rules of the game, the Slow Horses maneuver through an increasingly fraught and dangerous series of challenges with an earnest, seriocomic clumsiness that keeps Spy Horses from taking itself too seriously.

The series’ material is far stronger as a thrilling spy comedy than the intense spy drama vibe that ends up fueling director James Hawes’ most kinetic (and admittedly impressive) sequences. Combining both sensibilities is smart, and when it works, it really works.

Mood? Tense. Genre? Hokum. Script? By numbers. Likelihood of you catching whole series? I’ll get back to you.

Another amazing Apple Show. I love it. Gary Oldman and Jack Lowdon has incredible performance.

Best thing I have ever seen on Apple+. A tense and compelling spy drama laced with smidgens of good humour making the characters likeable. Only a six part series so I am hoping for more seasons if the story permits.

Remarkable show so far. Oldman is in top form as a aging spymaster along with a superb Kristen Scott Thomas who lead a team of fine young actors. Please don't listen to right wing trolls who don't like how they are portrayed. Yes Jingoism, bigotry, lunacy, narcissism, and idiocy are the hallmarks of any far right group. Primarily it's an inability to face reality that most defines them.

Slow is apt, because this moves at a crawl for me. I was surprised by the opening sequence as it didn't appear slow at all. It looked like a typical, Brit action/techno thriller. But I get it, how the might have fallen and all, and prettier Simon Pegg (sorry Simon, you're very pretty, but this guy just comes off as a polished version of you) ends up in **** with Gary Oldman and others. I found myself playing Candy Crush on my phone, tbh. I'm just not interested.

It's drab, it's shabby, it's verbose, it's overwrought, it's slow, it's dumb, it's a lazy paycheck for has-been actors mailing it in, and it's parading as a clichéd woke metaphore on English nationalism. And I, as a French, no, a Breton from Brittany, descendant of those thrown out by Anglo-saxons, yeah you dumb unwordly Americans wouldn't know, am defending English against this self-righteous nonsense. Brexit was dumb. Farage and BoJo are trash, but at least we can engage them. But leftist propaganda, such as this, has to be conspued and defeated.