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Slow Horses centres around an MI5 team who are a bit rubbish, making several mistakes in their career to date, so it makes you wonder if they’ve ever been sent for re-training, including the hot-headed Cartwright (Jack Lowden – Dunkirk), who we first see trying to keep an eye on a potential bad guy in the airport, who may or may not be carrying a bomb, and for the most part, he’s not making a great job of it.
The title comes from the fact they’re considered ‘slow horses’ because they’re the grunts of the job, and everyone who works at their building, Slough House, is there because they’re a bit crap, such as one of them having left a top secret file on a train. Part of the apparent mystery is wondering why everyone came to be working at that place, although in reality, there’s no way you’d put together a team that’s wholly made of complete idiots.
Out of the characters, while Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) seems a lot more in touch with everything than most, they’re led by the uncouth Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), first seen farting himself awake, the type of thing a dog of mine once did.
This is a world where plugging someone else’s USB stick into a laptop *instantly* starts it transferring the files, even though they never connect so soon, but that’s TV and movies for you.
Elsewhere, there’s daft bickering between the staff, a journalist called Hobden with a chequered career, and there’s also the kidnapping of a Muslim by a far-right group who threaten to execute him.
However, nothing of this is really gelling together, and while at the start it felt very ‘seen it all before’, as I got to the end of the second episode, I was just getting bored, despite any of the goings-on.
Slow Horses is on Apple TV+ from Friday April 1st, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. Two episodes are available at launch, and then the rest are added weekly.
Check out the trailer below:
Episode 1-2 Score: Nothing we’ve not seen before.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 45-65 per episode
Release date: March 28th 2022
Studio: Apple TV+
Format: 2.00:1
Director: James Hawes
Screenplay: Will Smith, Morwenna Banks, Mark Denton, Jonny Stockwood
Novel: Mick Herron
Music: Toydrum
Cast:
Jackson Lamb: Gary Oldman
River Cartwright: Jack Lowden
Sid Baker: Olivia Cooke
Spider Webb: Freddie Fox
Diana Taverner: Kristin Scott Thomas
Louisa Guy: Rosalind Eleazar
David Cartwright: Jonathan Pryce
Nick Duffy: Chris Reilly
Moe: Sam Hazeldine
Curly: Brian Vernel
Zeppo: Stephen Walters
Min Harper: Dustin Demri-Burns
Hassan Ahmed: Antonio Aakeel
Roddy Ho: Christopher Chung
Agent Owen: Lesley Harcourt
Agent Singh: Bally Gill
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.