With spoilers, the threat against the Slow Horses grows, as something Apple’s press releases gave away, er, ‘happens’. More here.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Zero chance of avoiding spoilers as we dig into the latest episode of Slow Horses, so if you’re not up to date with Daddy Issues – and even accepting that lots of websites seem to have given the game away anyway in their headlines – it’s best to move on.
Still here?
Well, in fairness to those other websites, the promo for this season of Slow Horses also had pre-warned us that Sid Baker would be making a reappearance. Thus, like Dirty Den returning to EastEnders all those years ago, they made us wait until the very end of the episode for what would have been a lovely rug pull. Sid was supposed to be dead, although it’d been hinted before that she might have found a way out from being shot in the head back in season one. Ta-da! Here she is. If River was surprised, he should just have been following the press releases from Apple TV’s publicity team.
Sid Baker may be the headline takeaway, but the turning of the screw is reserved for Diane Taverner, who is getting herself into something of a pickle.
Damien Cantor is, of all the threats she’d faced in her career, perhaps the one she need be most wary of. A media mogul, young, and whose politics veer to the far right, he also has a TV channel that’s one lawyer’s letter away from being called GB News. And he’s linked to, well, ‘other developments.’
In this instance, a bit of blackmail leads to Taverner agreeing to “one television interview”. It sounded a bad idea when it was first mooted. It turned into something potentially worse, and the suggestion now is there’s a leak. Cantor has information he shouldn’t, and Tavernor seems pretty compromised. We wait and see. For an intelligent woman, she’s walked straight into the midst of an old-fashioned trap. That ain’t going to go down well.
In any other episode, those two competing plotlines would happily keep me busy. But there’s also the entwined threat to the Slow Horses themselves. That Hugo Weaving is grizzling his way through the job of bumping some of them off, not averse to taking out one of the hired assassins if required. We meet him furiously eating crisps, staring at a fox (it’s a bit of a Disclosure Day fox to my eyes), and his mood doesn’t lighten for the next 49 minutes or so. Heck, we’re a body down before the titles play, and the Horses know he’s coming for them.
It doesn’t help that they’ve not been paid, and they’re not on The Park’s computer systems still. At one stage, Jackson Lamb and his five Fs almost looks concerned. Imagine that.
Anyway, I found myself reminded of the first The Equalizer movie when suddenly our attention was shifted to a big DIY store, as two assassins prowled the aisles in search of a bargain deal on fatal products. Say what you like about Slow Horses but it knows how to keep its feet very firmly on the ground. I like to think they’ll pull out their loyalty card too at the self-service checkout.
The back half of Daddy Issues though is two duelling cliffhangers. I’m assuming that, given the fact assassins are prowling, all the Horses won’t make it to the end of this season. I’m writing these reviews as I go along, so can’t give you any insight there, short of this feels like it’s building to something. Moira, though? Left on a sofa to die, assassins walking away questioning why their job is too easy? Nothing is in here for no reason.
Which brings us to Sid. All we get here is “Hello River”, and a whole load of questions. Why is she in the house at the end? Where has she been? What has she been up to?
Ah, Slow Horses. Credit to the episode here for not falling under the weight of a lot of narrative work, and it’s also got a fair few threads to work through for the rest of the season. A lot to take in at time, but a pleasure thus far to do so. More to come..
Our review of the last episode is here.
