‘Slow Horses’ Season 4: Gary Oldman and His Band of Outlier Spies Keep the Intrigue Fresh With Darker Suspense

Alci Rengifo

Grit and expert plotting come together in season four of Apple TV’s “Slow Horses,” a show that always stands out as a welcome antidote to the usual, absurdly overdone action spies we tend to get. Even as the plots go big with twists, murders and close calls, its band of spies feel believably fragile, at times close to burn out. With each new batch of episodes, Gary Oldman manages to somehow look even grimier. What keeps it flowing smoothly is that showrunner Will Smith and author Mick Herron structure the series around Herron’s novels. This time “Spook Street” is the source material which means there’s a good narrative map to follow. Favorite characters grow, juggle hard life developments while facing off with new terrorists.

The season opens with a mysterious terrorist strike in London when a shopping mall becomes the target of a car bomb. Our favorite outcast MI5 spies at Slough House are facing personal trials as this new threat emerges. Former master spy David (Jonathan Pryce) is increasingly suffering from dementia. He gets embroiled in a terrible situation when, during a confusing night, he shoots down a perceived intruder at home. His grandson, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), moves quickly to help David cover up the incident and go on the run. Of course, there’s more to the intruder than meets the eye. Over at Slough House, scruffy Jackson Lamb (Oldman) is still hitting the bottle hard but is sober enough to realize David might be the target of a much bigger scheme. He has to lead his band of spies to figure out what’s going on while confronting a mysterious new nemesis, Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving).

The great irony of “Slow Horses” is how engaging it is by making espionage work not seem fun at all. This season takes on a slightly darker, more personal air by exploring David’s dementia. Jonathan Pryce nearly steals Oldman’s spotlight with his empathetic, genuinely moving performance as a keen mind falling apart. In turn, Jack Lowden’s River becomes a more endearing character by going on a major odyssey into France to track down who the intruder at David’s home was, uncovering a vaster network behind the attempted assault. Other favorites undergo their own professional or life obstacles in a plausible, relatable way. Diana Taverner (Kristen Scott Thomas), the MI5 second in command, has a sharp wit made bitter by receiving a new boss, Claude Whelan (James Callis). It takes her little time to find out Whelan is another bureaucrat with shady details in his record, yet there’s not much she can do for now in a system with a male-dominated hierarchy. 

Whelan is just one of several new characters introduced this season (after quite a few were killed off or resigned in season three) which include new secretary Moira (Joanna Scanlan), Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley), and Coe (Tom Brooke), a fresh spy in the dog house who provides some dark comic relief. The remaining Slough House crew, Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar), Ho (Christopher Chung), Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan) and Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) are given witty banter but for most of the season are relegated to hanging around their makeshift office, wondering about everything going on outside. It doesn’t impact the pacing too much because so much of the writing focuses on River’s journeys in France, knocking on doors to interrogate the parents of the man killed in David’s home, evading French assassins in rundown villas while trying to make sure his grandfather isn’t eventually killed. Hugo Weaving’s Harkness is just as entertaining in the interludes where his character plots new bombings, mysteriously commanding henchmen via telephone to track targets. Jackson is stumbling around in the background, trying to put the pieces together. He also gets some of the season’s best moments bantering with Flyte, who calls him out for being such a slob.

“Slow Horses” never rushes and also never feels like a grueling slow burner. Like any good thriller, it doesn’t waste time and pays meticulous attention to how the plot should weave together by the end of the season. This one ends with a great climax where Harkness makes some shocking revelations where at least one Slough House character will never feel the same way to us again. A highlight is Weaving’s classic way of playing unsavory villains, pulling off an interrogation scene with Kristen Scott Thomas dripping with toxic arrogance. A ticking clock begins involving a major threat but there’s also heartbreak in a more relatable, universal development for David and his illness. Instead of ending with a cheap cliché or predictable cliffhanger, “Slow Horses” ends with an intense whisper which leaves us still caring about the eventual fate of its outcasts.

“Slow Horses” season four begins streaming Sept. 4 with new episodes premiering Wednesdays on Apple TV.