Although each episode of the fifth season of Slow Horses was as grabby and propulsive as always, the whole season was less satisfying than its parts. Some of this may be due to the departure of showrunner Will Smith, or perhaps it was a weak entry in the source material. Either way, there's good and bad this time around...
The overall plot was rather interesting: a group of Libyan terrorists want to get revenge for British imperialism (and the aftermath of the British pulling out of the Libyan war) by using their own playbook against them. I liked the way that we got a glimpse of the show's version of London politics, mostly because I like Nick Mohammed, who played Nathan on Ted Lasso. As an American, I was rather surprised at how much furor the mass-shooting caused, and then I was horrified that I've become so inured to mass shootings that I've forgotten they're not as common in other places.
The point, though, was not just what happened but how our team responded to it. My favorite part was Shirley. Paired with Marcus (RIP) for the past few seasons, Shirley had a chance to venture out on her own. Boy, did she! She was so edgy and paranoid that I assumed she was high, but apparently that's her sober vibe, and her immediate leap to the idea that Roddy was the intended victim of a terrorist hit squad proves the maxim that "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you." Or after Roddy, at least.
That Roddy's love life—his bot-love life—was the inciting event that, eventually, rendered The Park inoperable is somehow hilarious and horrifying. I mean, can't they just fire him? I know the conceit of the show is that there are various policies in place that mean the Slow Horses can't be fired, but... still. Him driving a bus into a house in season three was a minor tragedy. Him giving a terrorist access to his computer was just carelessness. Hilarious carelessness.
(Let's take a minute to consider his behavior in the interrogation room. It was played for laughs, and while it was, I guess, funny, it was also terrifying. Would you give him access to anything?!)
All of this led to some great beats this season: Whelan lost his job. I'll miss James Callis, but I won't miss Whelan. Diana Tavener is now First Desk, which should create some very interesting dynamics in the future: she disdains the Slow Horses, but she admires Lamb's acumen in a way that previous First Desks didn't seem capable of. Will she wind up relying on our team more than ever?
It wasn't a perfect season, though. I usually enjoy the twists and turns that Slow Horses takes, and I'm not the kind of viewer who likes to guess what's happening next. But there was a weird mixture of the improbable and the obvious throughout the season. Coe's Rube Goldberg method for murdering the mayoral candidate, for instance, was predicated on what I believe is officially called Wile E. Coyote physics. Shirley happening to be there right when Roddy was about to get run over was a shocker of a coincidence. River remembering the number of boots Shirley saw and making a useful—and correct!—deduction was even odder.
The mere existence of a dictaphone was so improbable that it was just weirdly obvious that the show couldn't figure out how to blackmail Whelan into resigning any other way. That Lamb never got a chance to speak to Tara (Roddy's fake girlfriend, played by Hiba Bennani) made it clear to me that she was more than she seemed, although actually maybe just all of the scenes with her in it made that clear. I like Slow Horses for its surprises. There weren't many of them here.
The bit that annoyed me the most, though, was the way that David Cartwright's dementia became a plot point for solving the question of what the terrorists would do next. His delay in articulating a possible next step created tension, but it's not like their moves were unpredictable. The terrorists were literally using the to-do list created by MI5. Lamb, Coe, River, or maybe even a quick google search could have figured out what might come next.
I'm not usually a person who freaks out about plot holes, so for me to notice so many says that something here didn't quite work. I do want to emphasize, though, that I plowed through the season with great glee. Even when improbable or obvious, Slow Horses is always a fun treat. The small moments, like the team gradually realizing that Lamb was telling them how to escape Slough House with little more than hairspray and moxie, always make the show worthwhile.
I am excited for the next season, and I'll leave you all with two questions: Do you think Louisa will come back? And what on earth is going on with Lamb's feet?
Three out of four cans of paint.
Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)
It was a fun series, though, as noted, perhaps not quite up to the standards of previous entries. Still, so much better and more enjoyable than most other stuff, and I’m hoping we don’t have to wait too long for series 6.
ReplyDeleteLamb’s feet are scarred in precisely the way he described when telling the taste of the agent tortured by the Stasi in East Germany; clearly, that story was about himself.
Thank you! I hadn't realized those were scars. I thought it was some sort of fungus or that he was struggling with some illness that caused foot issues.
Delete