Ponies centres around Beatrice Grant (Emilia Clarke – Solo: A Star Wars Story) and Twila Hasbeck (Haley Lu Richardson – Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die) in a title which comes about because while POIs are “Persons of Interest”, these two are “Persons of No Interest”, hence, PONIs… which is close enough to the title, although when they chirrup about the moniker, they do seem surprisingly upbeat for two women who’ve just been bereaved.
But their first meeting comes about when Bea is spotted by Twila at the market, because they’re both ‘Embassy wives’, in that the CIA is where their husbands work… until now, when their husbands were killed in a plane crash. Yet, since it’s the late ’70s and there’s lots of cloak-and-dagger operations, who knows what is real and what is Memorex? And maybe the occasional flashback scenes will help?
Still, after being brought back to the safety of the US, they immediately think about going back to Russia to find out what happened to their husbands, since they’re not getting the truth out of the US government. This would involve working with Intelligence back in Russia, because the Soviets won’t expect that women are being hired.
Their handler, Dane Walter (Adrian Lester – The Hack), informs the pair that for a year, he and his team have been trying to turn Sovert agent CK Solar, who’s working with important Russian intelligence, which the US need to get hold of, so that’s where they can enter the chat.
However, while it’s fun to see Harriet Walter (Shelter) playing a Russian woman with a strong accent, there’s a large amount of nonsense going on here, and since it’s not in the least bit probable, the longer this goes on, the more it leads to Ponies being quite a turn-off for me. There has to be a feel of possibility in this for me, that it could happen.
Thanks to our friends at Sky for the screener prior to release.
Ponies begins Friday May 22nd on Sky Atlantic.
It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but when it is, it will be listed on the New DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and 4K releases UK page.
Cert: 
Running time: 45 minutes per episode (6 episodes)
Release date: April 30th 2026
Studio: Sky Atlantic
Format: 2.00:1
Series Directors: Susanna Fogel, Viet Nguyen, Ally Pankiw
Producers: Gergö Balika, Howard Ellis, Adam Goodman, Jonathan Talbert
Creators: Susanna Fogel, David Iserson
Writers: Susanna Fogel, David Iserson, Carolyn Cicalese, Amalia Mathewson, Jordan J Riggs, Rosa Handelman
Music: Jung Jae-il, Christopher Willis
Cast:
Beatrice Grant: Emilia Clarke
Twila Hasbeck: Haley Lu Richardson
Dane Walter: Adrian Lester
Andrei Vasiliev: Artjom Gilz
Cheryl Symanski: Vic Michaelis
Ray Symanski: Nicholas Podany
Sasha Shevchenko: Petro Ninovskyi
Shep: Andrew Richardson
Chris Grant: Louis Boyer
Tom Hasbeck: John Macmillan
Ivanna: Lili Walters
Emile: Pál Mácsai
Alan Salek: Paul Chahidi
Manya Caplan: Harriet Walter
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.