Slow Horses: Season 3 - Review 

Rating: 4 out of 5

FOR my money, the third season of Apple TV’s spy thriller Slow Horses was the best yet.

Brilliantly written, as ever, this set of six episodes felt like the series was really hitting its stride, combining moments of brilliantly high tension with exhilarating action, trademark deadpan wit and sophisticated intelligence.

As always, it was headed by a brilliantly dishevelled Gary Oldman, as Slow Horses head Jackson Lamb, and featured yet more top drawer performances from the likes of Kristin Scott Thomas, as wannabe MI5 first chair Diana Taverner, Sophie Okonedo as her boss and nemesis Ingrid Tearney, and Jack Lowden as the eternally put-upon agent River once again being pushed to Jack Bauer meets James Bond levels of extremes.

If anything, this was the series that felt most Bond-like at times, opening with an extended sequence in Istanbul that resulted in the death of an MI5 agent (guest star, Katherine Waterson), staged to make it look like a suicide.

Cut to present day and the Slow Horses team is plunged straight into an emergency as veteran staffer Standish (Saskia Reeves) is taken hostage by one of her AA group members (Gangs of London’s Sope Dirisu), with River being told to infiltrate MI5 and acquire a suspect document.

Initially, River’s valiant attempts to save Standish both embarrass and surprise MI5ms top brass, including their top dog Nick Duffy (Chris Reilly), before being revealed to be a ruse designed to test MI5’s response capabilities.

But it quickly becomes clear that the kidnap team has a different, more personal agenda and, instead of handing Standish back as intended, hold onto her in the hopes of acquiring a different file and exposing an MI5 cover-up that leads all the way back to that opening death in Istanbul.

By season’s end, the Slow Horses team have cottoned on to their predicament and must choose sides - with River and Louisa (Rosalind Eleazer) trapped in an underground bunker with the kidnappers and surrounded by an MI5 kill team.

The ensuing firefight, played out over the final two episodes, is both tense and brilliantly executed, boasting an exceptionally high body count and a genuine sense of peril: you’re never quite sure who will survive, especially once two further Slow Horses members -  Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan) and Shirley (Aimee-Fifon Edwards) - join the fray in a hapless rescue attempt.

Lamb, meanwhile, gets his own action sequence when he opts to retrieve Standish, only to find himself exposed to another kill team. On this occasion, the cat-and-mouse scenario allows room for Lamb to demonstrate his own ability with booby traps - as well as his ruthless killer instinct.

Both situations, while tense and violent, are also imbued with a lot of humour… Oldman emerging as droll and exasperated as ever, while other various members of the Slow Horses team delivering their own brand of comedy as they attempt to outwit their pursuers and survive. It’s a deft balance that could have felt clunky in the wrong hands; but it plays out superbly well here.

Hell, even the sight of Ho (Christopher Chung) driving a double decker bus into the hostage house in his own absurd attempt to contribute gets the required laugh without seeming stupid. If anything, it affords Oldman yet another opportunity to deliver a killer line: something he grasps with relish.

Offsetting some of the action, meanwhile, is a chess-like battle of wits between Taverner and Tearney that will see either Taverner finally secure her first chair position, or secure the cover-up that Tearney is seeking. Played out over a whisky fuelled conversation, this is an acting masterclass from Thomas and Okonedo.

The other great thing about this series is its sustained sense of scepticism. Where Bond generally has good prevail, even when taking on internal corruption, Slow Horses has a more downbeat and cynical world view. Its central players aren’t so much losers as beaten down veterans, scarred by betrayal, conflicted morals or simply having been around too long and witnessed too much.

They know that lives are expendable and that self-interest trumps right and wrong. They’re merely players in a game.

It’s a show that feels right for the times in which we now live - and, indeed, Slow Horses isn’t afraid to confront hot button issues and infer cover-ups and duplicity.

It’s what makes the whole ensemble cast so richly absorbing, with even the likes of Kirwan’s gambling addict Marcus and Edwards' drug addicted Shirley (suddenly finding her inner action heroine) so endearing. These are flawed individuals who shine in spite of their troubles and traumas.

Oldman remains the pick of the bunch, of course, his Lamb an enigma shot through with contradictions. He cares but goes out of his way not to show it; he’s a sceptic but still resides on the right side of things (just about), but he knows when to bend the odd rule or take out a necessary obstacle. And he’s tremendously ambivalent: whether putting down his colleagues with some witty humdingers or imparting cold, hard truths to even those closest to him.

Slow Horses is a genuinely class act. And with season 3, it achieves some ridiculously giddy highs.