Craving another spy show as good as ‘Slow Horses’? Start with these picks
Craving another spy show as good as ‘Slow Horses’? Start with these picks
Jackson Lamb is a tough act to follow, but these shows prove that flawed, messy agents are a lot of fun to watch.
Watching Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb run off insults I can barely keep up with at his rag-tag crew of Slow Horses at Slough House is timeless fun. And with Season 6 officially over, and Seasons 7 and 8 confirmed, “Slow Horses” is starting to feel timeless. It’s rare for a show in the streaming era to get so many seasons… and there’s no sign of slowing down. That’s the power of IP — the novels provide new stories, new characters, and plenty of espionage fun. And I think, after reading the first book earlier this year, the TV show may do it better! Now that’s rare. But I’m getting ahead of myself. “Slow Horses” Season 6 is over for now, and we all need something else to watch. Here are my picks.
Slow Horses
Follow a dysfunctional team of MI5 agents—and their obnoxious boss, the notorious Jackson Lamb—as they navigate the espionage world’s smoke and mirrors to defend England from sinister forces.
Loved ‘Slow Horses’? Watch: ‘Legends’
I know this is bold, but “Legends” is as good as “Slow Horses” (ducks for cover). I called it the best underrated drama on Netflix, and I desperately need more people to watch it. It shares a lot of DNA with “Slow Horses” in that it doesn’t follow slick spies. It follows ordinary British customs officers who go undercover to try and take down some of Britain’s most dangerous drug gangs in the 1990s.
Where the Slow Horses are disgraced spies, these “Legends” are mostly ordinary people who were working dead-end jobs when they were recruited. Tom Burke is my favorite — he plays Guy, and his legend (the fake identity spies create when they go undercover) is the “tough guy” importer looking to transport drugs for the cartel. There’s no fancy tech here, just gut instinct and split-second decisions that could make the difference between living and dying. Now, “Legends” is a bit more grounded than “Slow Horses” and lacks a bit of the humor, but that’s not a dig. It’s its own beast, and one 100 percent worth watching.
Legends
As drugs flood the streets of ’90s Britain, a team of civil servants is thrust undercover to topple the gangs behind it.
Try out: ‘Black Doves’
“Black Doves” returns with Season 2 on Thursday, Nov. 5 on Netflix, so it’s the perfect time to add another British spy thriller to your list. This one follows Keira Knightley as Helen Webb — an ordinary (or so it seems) wife and mother who’s married to a powerful British politician. Except she’s really a spy, passing on the intelligence she picks up to an organization called Black Doves. And when her lover is murdered, Sam Young (Ben Whishaw) shows up to protect her. He’s an assassin and an old friend. Of course, they dig up a much larger conspiracy.
This one matches the sarcastic, funny vibe of “Slow Horses.” Sam and Helen have a great back-and-forth relationship that keeps things light as they’re pushed into more dangerous situations. You are going to get a bit more action here than in “Slow Horses,” including shootouts, assassinations, etc. But the British wit is here, the espionage is here, and the characters that you’ll find yourself thinking about in the middle of a workday are here.
Black Doves
When a spy posing as a politician’s wife learns her lover has been murdered, an old assassin friend joins her on a quest for truth — and vengeance.
Watch next: ‘PONIES’
It feels like “PONIES” was cancelled before it even arrived, which is really a shame because this show works. I get that period shows are expensive (this one is set in 1977) and it needs to justify the production cost but the Cold War spy thriller wasn’t given much of a chance! It follows two American women working at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, when suddenly their husbands die (mysteriously, of course) and the CIA comes calling. Emilia Clarke plays Bea Grant, an intelligent, Russian-speaking secretary, while Haley Lu Richardson plays Twila Hasbeck, an American who’s loud and brash (you get it).
The fun of this one is watching these two try to survive not only the Soviet intelligence landscape, but each other. Just like “Slow Horses,” there’s a lot of humor here as you get this fun buddy-comedy vibe between Clarke and Richardson. And once more, you get to watch two people who are not trained for this kind of work figure out how to do the job in real time, with real stakes, under real pressure. But like the Slow Horses, when given a chance, they rise to the occasion.
PONIES
In 1977 Moscow, two “PONIES” (“persons of no interest”) become CIA operatives and uncover a Cold War conspiracy their husbands were killed for.
Wild card pick: ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’
This isn’t the 2005 “film” you remember, but the DNA is all here. “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” on Prime Video is the most fun spies can have without taking off their clothes… except they do! And that’s the hook. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine play two strangers assigned to pose as husband and wife while carrying out dangerous spy missions together.
Except the whole thing is wrapped in a rom-com wrapper. Each episode moves them into a new stage of the relationship, so you get first dates, vacations, jealousy, sex, and all the usual couple problems, except there are assassins mixed in. Tara and I loved Season 1 (that ending though?!), and with Season 2 now officially back (with new leads Mark Eydelshteyn and Talia Ryder) likely with a 2027 release, you’ve got to watch it. It has all the dark humor of “Slow Horses,” and these characters are just as messy. Now, it’s definitely more rom-com than anything in Slow Horses (though Min and Louisa are kind of like that until…) and you get big, fun international locations and action set pieces. But if you want more imperfect people being imperfect on the spy-job, watch it.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Meet the Smiths: two lonely strangers, John and Jane, who have given up their lives and identities to be thrown together as partners – both in espionage and in marriage.
More to watch after finishing ‘Slow Horses’:
‘Bodyguard’ | Netflix
Bodyguard
A troubled war veteran is assigned to protect a controversial politician who may be the target of a terror plot.
‘The Bureau’ | Paramount+
The Bureau
Within the DGSE (General Directorate for External Security), a department called the Office Of Legends (BDL) forms and remote pilot the most important agents of the French intelligence services: Clandestine. Immersion in hostile country, their mission is to identify individuals who may be recruited as sources of information. Operating “under caption”, that is to say in a fabricated identity from scratch, they live for many years in a permanent duplicity. Our hero just returned from a clandestine mission six years in Damascus. But contrary to what is required by safety rules, he does not abandon his legend and the identity under which he lived in Syria, thus putting in danger the whole system.
‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ | Prime Video
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan
When CIA analyst Jack Ryan stumbles upon a suspicious series of bank transfers his search for answers pulls him from the safety of his desk job and catapults him into a deadly game of cat and mouse throughout Europe and the Middle East, with a rising terrorist figurehead preparing for a massive attack against the US and her allies.
‘The Day of the Jackal’ | Peacock
The Day of the Jackal
An unrivalled and highly elusive lone assassin, the Jackal, makes his living carrying out hits for the highest fee. But following his latest kill, he meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer who starts to track down the Jackal in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, leaving destruction in its wake.