MI5 out of 10
Di Taverner: You really care about them, don't you?
Jackson Lamb: Nah, I think they’re a bunch of absolute losers. But they're my losers.
Slow Horses is a live action spy drama on Apple TV+, developed by writer and showrunner Will Smith (Veep) (no relation to the actor/rapper) and based on the Slough House novels written by Mick Herron.
For MI5 agents, there's no worse fate than being assigned to Slough House — an outstation so named because "it's so far removed from the action, it might as well be in Slough." It's a dumping ground for all the screw-ups and misfits, who have to work in an ancient, decrepit building and do the most dull and meaningless work in the Service. The "Slow Horses" of Slough House are ruled over by Jackson Lamb, whose slovenly, alcoholic, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed demeanor are the result of being Five's best agent for decades. But despite their status, the Slow Horses are occasionally draw into some real high-stakes espionage and pitted against both real enemies of the UK and the political machinations of MI5.
The series stars Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden and Kristin Scott Thomas, with Olivia Cooke, Rosalind Eleazar, Chris Chung, Dustin Demri-Burns, Jonathan Pryce and Sophie Okonedo in supporting roles. As of 2023, three series have aired and a fourth and fifth have been confirmed
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The series contains examples of:
- Adaptational Attractiveness:
- Oldman’s put on some weight for the role and looks quite scruffy, but he’s still a long way from the "Timothy Spall gone to seed" description of Jackson Lamb in the books.
- In the novels, Ingrid Tierney is described in various unflattering ways, notably as "bottle-shaped" and "a woman whom even the kinder passengers would have difficulty not finding ugly". Sophie Okonedo is, uh, Not That.
- Adaptational Badass: River, in a mild example. In the novel Real Tigers, when River breaks into Regent's Park, he's very quickly caught by the Dogs. In the series, River successfully escapes from the Park, and is only caught later.
- Adaptational Location Change: A minor one. The show, like the book, opens with River's desperate hunt for the bomber - which is is moved from central London's King's Cross railway station to Stansted Airport.
- Adaptational Name Change: The book's far-right group, the Voice of Albion, becomes the show's Sons of Albion, but is otherwise unchanged.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Jackson Lamb, although it's downplayed.
- He actually takes River's phone away before Roddy can tell River about Sid's death and tells River in person, giving a seemingly sincere speech about death in their line of work.
- In series 2, when sending River on an operation, Lamb is upfront that River will be deliberately walking into a trap in order to draw out the bad guy, whereas in the novel Dead Lions, he deliberately sends River in blind and is called out for this by Standish.
- Adaptation Expansion: Downplayed. The last couple of episodes significantly expands the search for Hassan, adding new scenes and disputes between the extremists holding him. The shooting at the docks and the gunfight at the folly are also entirely new.
- Adapted Out: Kay White has been omitted from the Slough House team. This doesn’t really require any season one plot changes, as her role is to be detained by the Dogs so that she can be pressured into betraying Lamb - which also happens to Struan.
- Artistic License: Various characters refer to themselves and others as "MI-5 agents". In reality, such members of British intelligence are called "case officers" but much fiction uses the term "agent"note because the concept of secret agents is so ingrained in pop culture.
- Broken Pedestal: Two in the series 3 finale.
- River loses a lot of respect for his grandfather David Cartwright, the MI5 legend who inspired him to go into the Service, when David burns the proof of Service misdeeds that River risked his life to obtain, and tells River to stay silent and protect the Service's reputation.
- Catherine learns from Lamb (though she seems skeptical) that her former boss and idol, Charles Partner, was a traitor who sold secrets to the Russians and set up Catherine to take the fall.
- By-the-Book Cop: Downplayed, but River, Luisa and Min are not going to stand aside and let MI5 snipers kill a prisoner who's no longer a threat.
- Canon Foreigner: In the book, Hassan is kidnapped by three extremists (referred to as Curly, Larry and Moe). The series adds a fourth (credited as Zeppo), perhaps because it spends more time on their conversations and disputes.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Deconstructed by River. He thinks he's hot stuff and eager to rush in to be the hero. However, this means he doesn't adequately analyze the situation and leaves him prone to manipulation by more cynical parties that exploit him for their own aims.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Lamb is a slovenly has-been, but he can take down a man who's much younger and fitter than him with no problem. He's also shown to be adept at playing the political game and Taverner says that he used to be one of the best agents MI5 ever had. His observation skills are also top-notch, in Season 1's final episode he near-instantly figures out which direction the kidnappers ran and how many are still alive from "reading the signs of the earth."
- Culturally Sensitive Adaptation: In Dead Lions, River has a sexual relationship with Kelly Tropper while undercover in Upshott, which falls under the definition of sexual assault by deceptionnote . This is omitted from the series.
- Cutting the Knot: After Roddy Ho gets a lead on the van the kidnappers hired, he tells the others it'll take him hours more hacking to find the registration number. Catherine gets it by walking across the street and calling the rental company on the payphone, pretending to have been in an accident with the vehicle.
- Deadpan Snarker: Judging by the first trailer, Jackson Lamb’s definitely kept this attribute from the books.
- Death by Adaptation:
- In the Slow Horses book, the only one of the three kidnappers who's definitely killed is The Mole, Alan Black. In the series, which has four, one's shot after a quarrel about Hassan's execution and another's shot by the security forces at the docks.
- In the novel Dead Lions, Andrei Chernitsky genuinely leaves the country after he kills Dickie Bow, playing no further part in the plot. In season two of the series he remains in the UK, and is eventually shot dead while trying to kill David Cartwright.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype:
- In a less cynical spy story, River Cartwright would be a clear-cut hero. He's young, handsome, and athletic and eager to charge in to take down the bad guys. In the world of the Slow Horses, however, he's constantly humiliated and put into his place by the slovenly and more cynical Jackson Lamb while politically ruthless higher-ups easily exploit his heroic tendencies to turn him into a scapegoat. Cartwright is initially too idealistic to even consider how cold-blooded his own MI5 colleagues can be.
- Taverner deconstructs Well-Intentioned Extremist by showing how much damage an incompetent one can cause. Her False Flag Operation allegedly had good intentions, but when multiple blunders on her part cause it to go Off the Rails, she keeps digging herself deeper in a desperate attempt to throw anyone but her under the bus for her own failures. As a result, she's part of Season 1's Big Bad Duumvirate alongside the Sons of Albion.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation:
- A minor one. The book doesn't feature Taverner and Judd's conversation about Hobden, and it's implied that Judd arranges his death in a hit-and-run. In the series he's clearly killed by MI5 and Duffy pushes him under a truck.
- Dirty Cop:
- MI5 will casually falsify records, plant evidence, and even make people disappear if such actions suit the service's needs.
- On a milder level, Lamb has the Slow Horses keep an eye out for restaurants that hire new staff not as counter-intelligence but to get free meals in exchange for not reporting anyone to the Immigration Service.
- Dramatic Irony: The entire point of the plot of Season 2 was Nikolai wanting to "professionally humiliate" the Slough House so the agents there knew what it felt like. Lamb literally laughs that the only reason people are in the Slough House is that they're already professionally humiliated.
- The Friend Nobody Likes:
- Roddy Ho is at Slough House because he's so annoying that no other division within MI5 will have him.
- Within Slough House, the denizens do everything they can to avoid interacting with Struan Loy because of his chipper attitude.
- Gasshole: Lamb's introduction to the series has him sleeping on the sofa in his office until he farts so loudly that it wakes him up. His flatulence is so bad that it disgusts everyone around him, and sometimes even himself:Lamb: Woah! Better out than in!
Taverner: God, you're vile.
Lamb: God, actually...maybe not. - Instant Death Bullet: In the final episode of season 2, it takes exactly one bullet to the back for Pashkin to drop stone dead.
- Insufferable Genius: Roddy Ho is a genius hacker, but he is so obnoxious and arrogant that no one wants to work with him, thus he is now stuck at the place where the unwanted spies go.
- Irony: Lamb is not an innocent lamb. He's a smart, jaded, cynical, experienced operator at both spycraft and politics.
- Jabba Table Manners: Lamb is so disgusting when he eats that Cartwright would rather sit next to him and get closer to his pungent body odor than sit across from him and be treated to the sight.
- Jerkass Has a Point: As nasty as Lamb can be, he has the point that in a real situation, Cartwright's blunder at the airport could have been a disaster costing hundreds of lives. He compares it to a pilot crashing a simulator but still allowed to fly a 747 and when Cartwright protests it's not the same, Lamb fires back River has to understand that before anyone trusts him.
- Mundane Solution: Roddy is flabbergasted when Cartwright shows up at his house. He claims there's no way anyone could have found him thanks to his constant changing of names and backgrounds, hiding his e-mail and scrubbing results for himself and no data trail whatsoever. Cartwright explains that Lamb has known all along where he is because he simply followed Roddy home from work.
- Myth Arc: The third season centers on rogue Chieftain contractors who are after MI5 files kept under lock and key known as the Grey Files, which documented all known conspiracy theories, including who was responsible for 9/11. They're after specific files that can prove that Alison's death was a cover up by someone in the British government.
- Named by the Adaptation: An argument in the van provides names for some of Hassan's kidnappers, who are nameless (Hassan thinks of them as Curly, Larry and Moe) in the book.
- Nepotism: Cartwright's family is considered MI5 royalty and Webb says that Cartwright's mistake in the series' opening should have been bad enough to have gotten him sacked but that his grandfather used his connections to prevent it from happening.
- Never Suicide:
- Charles Partner was killed by Jackson Lamb, who made it look like a suicide.
- Donovan believes that his girlfriend's suicide was staged.
- Nice Mean And In Between: The three members of the Sons of Albion can be considered downplayed examples, as they are all still white-supremacist terrorists. Zeppo is the nice one, as he's the most reasonable and the least hostile towards Hassan Ahmed. Curly is the mean one because he very much would like to kill Hassan and is the most unstable. Larry is in-between by virtue of being the stupidest member and the one who pretty much does whatever he's told to do while also not being as malicious.
- Non-Indicative Name: Slough House isn't actually in Slough, but is referred to as such because it's so far away from MI5 headquarters and actual intelligence work that it might as well be. Similarly, MI5 HQ isn't near Regent's Park but is called that because it's a fancy place to work.
- Not So Above It All: In season 3 Cartwright makes a real mess of things when he tries to save a kidnapped Standish by breaking all kinds of laws and MI5 rules. He expects Lamb to give him a massive chewing out and maybe finally fire him. Instead, Lamb admits that given the stakes, he would have done exactly the same thing.
- Oh, Crap!: Tearney thinks that she lucked out and avoided a career-ending disaster with the entire Tiger Team fiasco. Then she realizes that she just gave outsiders access to files that might contain information about the Istanbul operation. Color drains from her face and she starts to issue kill orders.
- Poor Communication Kills: If Cartwright had just realized his contact was identifying a suspected terrorist by "white shirt, blue tee" and not the other way around, the entire opening scene mess at the airport (not to mention scores of events that followed) could have been avoided.
- Private Intelligence Agency: River was scouted for consideration to join a PIA in Season 2 called Elessar. However, he said that he wasn't given an offer due to the mess that happened when River made a mess on the MI5 training op.
- Private Military Contractors: Season 3 has a PSC named Chieftain, which ran a tiger team operation to test MI5 protocols. However, one of them led by Sean Donovan went rogue against orders to let Standish go. The characters lampshade the difference between contractors working for official (ie government approved) security companies and unaffiliated mercenaries who are usually untrustworthy wild cards.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Ultimately, Slough House's victories all come up at a huge cost with lives and careers in ruins and its denizens, namely River, no closer to regaining their good names to be welcomed back into the fold at Regent's Park.
- Race Lift:
- In the books, Louisa Guy is white (and, in the backstory, very worried that she’s perceived as racist after she follows the wrong Black man). Here, she’s played by biracial actor Rosalind Eleazar, who’s of Ghanaian and white British heritage.
- Roger Barrowby is also white in the books, but Black in the show (played by Kurt Egyiawan).
- Ingrid Tearney is white in the books but played by biracial actor Sophie Okonedo.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Slough House. Which gets all the incompetent bunglers of MI5. Or at least those who aren't sacked outright.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Only MI5's worse screw-ups are assigned to Slough House, where they're expected to do meaningless and tedious tasks until retirement or they quit out of humiliation and frustration. Cartwright's grandfather tells him that there are ways back into the fold, but that he'll have to work hard to do it.
- Reliably Unreliable Guns: The climax of Season 3 escalates tension by having multiple guns jam at inopportune times.
- The Reveal:
- The op at the beginning of the series was actually a training exercise. However, Cartwright caused so much disruption that it damaged his career.
- Sid wasn't banished to the Slow Horses - she's in Slough House on Taverner’s orders, watching River.
- The Hassan Ahmed kidnapping was a False Flag Operation instigated by Taverner, using a former Slow Horse as an agent provocateur.
- The Stansted training “fiasco” actually wasn’t River’s fault and was set up by Webb and Taverner in order to get rid of an incriminating photograph which could tie Taverner to Alan Black.
- Sid Baker doesn't exist in the MI5 database. Either she's been completely erased or the Sid identity was just a legend created so that she could infiltrate Slough House.
- Charles Partner was killed by Lamb on the instructions of David Cartwright. Getting sent to Slough House was Lamb's reward, so he wouldn't have to deal with life-or-death stakes.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Upon learning that Struan Loy sold him out to Taverner, Lamb gets Taverner to throw Loy out of the service.
- Refuge in Audacity:
- If having Catherine pull a gun on a member of the Dogs, then stealing Duffy's ride is mad enough. Lamb tops it by returning the car to Regents Park causing the equal to a SWAT team to face him down, blasting (I Would) Walk 500 Miles by The Proclaimers, all the while. Then he asks for coffee and how the canteen is as he's led into the Park to see Lady Di.
- Cartwright's "wild adventure" in the beginning of season 3 is full of this. He has to bluff Duffy into letting him into the Park, ditch him and then bluff his way through multiple security checkpoints to get to the archives.
- Shout-Out: A new one for the adaptation. David Cartwright attempts to cheer a disheartened River with a reference to John le Carré's spy George Smiley. Who was most famously played by the guy who plays Lamb.
- The episode title "From Upshott with Love" is one for the James Bond movie, From Russia with Love.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Spider revels in every opportunity to show off that he works in Regent's Park and gets to interact with MI-5 leadership. This is countered by the fact that he has no real field experience and those he sucks up to regard him as an annoyance and wouldn't hesitate to throw him out into the cold when the chance arises.
- Smug Snake: Spider Webb is on track to climb the ladder at Regent's Park and loves to lord his superior political position over others, especially River. This gets him killed in Real Tigers when he ultimately winds up trying to use his position and status to antagonize the wrong person.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A common bit is how moments that would be brushed off in a standard spy drama become more realistic here.
- In Season 3, River tries to escape by hopping from one walkway to another twenty feet down. Rather than no damage, River lands hard on one leg and is shown limping for a long while afterward.
- Terminally-Ill Criminal: Nikolai Katinsky was one of the greatest Soviet Spymasters during the Cold War, setting up numerous sleeper agents and moles in the highest ranks of British Intelligence. Following escaping to America and living for years as a seemingly unassuming bureaucrat, upon being diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months left to live, he decides to embark on a final quest for revenge against Jackson Lamb, by robbing the Glasshouse, as Lamb was responsible for killing his operative all those years ago.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: When Loy is being dragged off to be interrogated at Regent's Park, he tells his children that he's going off on a special mission. The agent sent to escort him decides to play along so as not to scare the kids.
- The Siege: Chieftain contractors cordon the MI5 storage facility and raid it to kill everyone inside. River and Louisa are forced to hold them off while Donovan and Ben look for specific files linking Alison's death to the government.
- The Show of the Books: Adapted from Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb series.
- Smoking Is Edgy: Jackson Lamb is constantly seen drinking and smoking. He is clearly the most cynical of the group and is often a Jerkass to the other characters. Later, we find out that, among other dubiously ethical things, he had to kill a former friend of his after MI 5 found out he had leaked secrets to the Russians.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In season two, Spider is shot by Pashkin, but he's up and about again for season three. In the original novel, Dead Lions, he's left on life support, and it's implied that he's died by the end of sequel Real Tigers, as River finds his hospital room empty.
- Spy Fiction: Of the stale beer variety. Slough House is made up of MI5's cast offs, tasked with doing dirty and menial tasks designed to grind its denizen's self esteem into find dust. Lamb is just hanging around until retirement while the rest stay out of spite (or in hopes of redemption in Cartwright's case).
- Un-person: MI5 can and will wipe all documented evidence linking embarrassing operatives with the service to avoid public humiliation. Alan Black and Sid Baker are both erased from the records in this way.
- Wardrobe Flaw of Characterization: Lamb's clothes are rumpled beyond saving, his socks have holes in them, and the tie he goes through the trouble of wearing is lopsided, showing how much he's beyond caring about what others think of him. Flashbacks before his complete descent into cynicism show he used to be a sharp dresser.
- Western Terrorists: The Sons of Albion have been under MI5 surveillance. They've gotten more attention after they nabbed a Pakistani-British university student.
- Wham Episode:
- “Cicada” reveals that River has met Kelly’s parents in Upshott who happen to be Russian agents.
- "Uninvited Guests" has Tearney authorize deadly force against anyone in an MI5 storage facility since she found out that Sean's after a file that's not suppose to be taken off MI5 HQ.
- "Footprints" mentions that the British government tested a LRAD-based device that got North Korean embassy staff and some tourists in Istanbul in hospital. Tearney wished to cover that up.
- Whole Costume Reference: David Cartwright's clothes and hairstyle are deliberately modeled on John le Carré.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Cartwright's given name is "River", which others note is unusual. He says it's because his mother was going through a hippy phase when she had him.
