Do critics still think ‘Slow Horses’ is a show pony?
Do critics still think ‘Slow Horses’ is a show pony?
Season 5 of the series debuted on Wednesday, and critics are mostly in full agreement about its continued quality.
Jackson Lamb and his band of roustabouts are back to save the day for king and country once again — if they can manage to avoid mucking things up too badly. “Slow Horses” Season 5 has premiered on Apple TV+, with the first episode dropping on Wednesday, Sept. 24 and subsequent episodes to arrive on upcoming Wednesday mornings.
This season on “Slow Horses,” it’s clear that something’s off just about everywhere — starting with the team. River Cartwright still clearly hasn’t processed the events of Season 4, and the death of Marcus Longridge still hangs like a cloud over the Slough House operatives. Jackson Lamb’s apathy for his team borders on contempt as usual, but one of the group can’t shake the feeling that something big is happening just under the surface, even as a mass shooting draws the attention of most law enforcement and intelligence officials in Britain.
Watch a trailer for ‘Slow Horses’ Season 5
“Slow Horses” has been a favorite of critics since premiering in 2020. It’s also been a personal favorite, ever since The Streamable editor Matt Taminini turned me onto it last year. You’ll be getting a review of Season 5 from me this weekend, but in the meantime, The Streamable has assembled excerpts from critics around the web to show audiences if they think “Slow Horses” has recaptured the magic for another season — heads up, some of the reviews contain adult language.
What are critics saying about ‘Slow Horses’ Season 5?
Ben Dowell | The Times
In his last outing in charge, lead writer Will Smith has made a few changes to London Rules, the Mick Herron book on which this is based, but the essentials are happily in place…. After spending so much time in the company of these glorious creations in a show that manages to be both character-led and beautifully plotted, you know that quite a few horses have fallen at the jumps over the past four series. But you wouldn’t want anyone to touch a hair of even Roddy Ho’s head when what he calls the “Ho-down” begins in earnest. And it’s a thrilling dance.
Ben Travers | Indiewire
Distinguishing the appearance of truth from truth itself isn’t limited to individuals, either. Season 5 is set in a country gone “fucking mad.” When a campaign volunteer for the mayor gets killed by a gunman who supports the opposition, investigators prepare for the ramifications of a political attack. But when it turns out the shooter — who police initially believed had taken his own life — was, in fact, shot by someone else, the assumed situation spawns question after question: Who? When? Why? As more strange situations sweep London, our favorite scruffy spies must decide what, who, and how much to believe. Is this a particularly bad week, filled with normal crises at an abnormal pace, or is there some sort of grand conspiracy connecting each bizarre emergency?
Brian Tallerico | RogerEbert.com
Based on the novel London Rules, this is the weakest “Slow Horses” season to date, and yet it’s still pretty darn entertaining. It’s not a steep enough drop to allow for concern that the writers can’t immediately get it back in the 6th outing (and the preview for that at the end of this season is thrilling) but it lacks some of the spark of the best of the show, in part because of a rushed plot and the characters it chooses to highlight and sideline. The writing on “Slow Horses” is too consistent for it to completely fumble in its fifth outing. Still, this year reminded me a bit of the fifth season of “Only Murders in the Building,” another show that has perfected its formula so thoroughly that it starts to taste a little overly familiar, even if we still love the flavor.
Nick de Semlyen | Empire
[Slow Horses] remains a lot of fun, one of the freshest dramas on TV. But this particular batch doesn’t quite hit the heights of previous ones, for a couple of reasons. For one, the increased screentime for Ho and the equally ridiculous new MI5 boss Claude Whelan (James Callis), aka First Desk, pushes Lamb and other Slow Horses stalwarts like River Cartwright (Simon Pegg-a-like Jack Lowden) somewhat to the periphery: while they still get great moments, the general chemistry feels a little diminished. And, after a powerhouse guest appearance by Hugo Weaving last time around, the villains here are fairly forgettable.
Carly Lane | Collider
Slow Horses Season 4 was a game-changer in more ways than one, from the bombshell reveal that turned everything on its head for the Cartwright family to the show’s willingness to break its own well-established formula. By comparison, Season 5 is a return to the familiar, a comfort-food installment that isn’t really trying to top what came before — but that doesn’t mean it’s still not a hell of a lot of fun. One of the biggest questions hanging over everything early on is whether the Slow Horses have lost their edge in the realm of espionage, and whether the trauma caused by Harkness and his mercenaries still lingers, but Season 5 emphasizes that it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation.
Tim Lowery | The A.V. Club
At first, this season of Slow Horses struggles to live up to its last. The familiar banter and caustic put-downs from Lamb are still there and firing as fast and as amusingly as ever. But the juice of this particular tale (which is based on London Rules, the fifth novel in Mick Herron’s series) feels, while certainly timely, with a politician played by Ted Lasso‘s Nick Mohammed vowing to “Make London Londerful Again,” thinner and, dramatically, less emotionally complex. Some of that is bound to happen when you take characters who have mostly been on the back burner and move them closer to the front, like Roddy Ho…This many seasons in, the show needs to do some of this maneuvering so as not to drive home the same central characters’ issues and burn out. It’s just that they—again, understandably—don’t hit like, for instance, River’s bond with his dementia-addled grandfather (played by Jonathan Pryce), a relationship that largely fades into the background this time around.
Hannah J. Davies | The Guardian
The main problem here, though, is that the plot pinballs around far too much, and far too frivolously. In previous series, the enemy – the Russians, rogue ex-MI5 agents – has been identified early and given plenty of screen time. Here, a terrorist plot battles for relevance with meditations on “incel” culture and the environment; a blackmail threat against spineless service head Claude Whelan (James Callis); and a brief will-they-won’t-they between two characters that adds absolutely nothing to proceedings…The sound editing at the end of episode five is really, really good. But the fact that I am so intensely taken by what I am listening to and not what I am watching says it all.
Lili Loofbourow | The Washington Post
Have I said this is the funniest “Slow Horses” season on record? It is, despite the usual surfeit of unprocessed trauma and some depressingly prescient plot points. Shirley, who’s still mourning Marcus’s (Kadiff Kirwan) death and fighting her drug addiction, saw the murder attempt but can’t get anyone at Slough House, including Roddy himself, to care. A simmering, dysregulated River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), still reeling from his near-lethal encounter with his father, Frank (Hugo Weaving), and grieving his grandfather David’s (Jonathan Pryce) descent into dementia, is paired up with JK Coe (Tom Brooke), the erratic, earbud-wearing newcomer to Slough House. Lamb’s doing, of course. It is not a harmonious partnership.
Apple TV
Apple TV (formerly known as Apple TV+) is a subscription video streaming service for $14.99 per month, offering a growing slate of original series, films, documentaries, and specials. Unlike other platforms that combine licensed titles with originals, Apple TV is built entirely around exclusive programming, making it the home of critically acclaimed hits such as “Ted Lasso,” “Severance,” “The Morning Show,” and “Silo.” Its lineup continues to expand with award-winning dramas, comedies, family-friendly shows, and blockbuster original films like “CODA,” which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.