Slow Horses

Gary Oldman leads an all-star cast in the new new Apple TV Plus series Slow Horses. Here's how to watch it free online with a 7-day Apple TV+ trial ...

Apple TV+ is available in over 100 countries. Slow Horses, a grimy British espionage thriller starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, premiered on Apple TV+ on Friday, 1st April 2022 and all five episodes are now available to watch in full. Slow Horses is based on author Mick Herron’s award-winning crime novels, and the theme is sung by Mick Jagger no less.

Real intelligence agents are not like James Bond or Jason Bourne. You can't go all rogue and still go unscathed. Sometimes, if you fail, you are sent into ...

“Slow Horses follows a team of British intelligence agents who serve in a dumping ground department of MI5 – Slough House. Oldman stars as Jackson Lamb, the brilliant but irascible leader of the spies who end up in Slough House due to their career-ending mistakes. When River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), a newcomer to Slough House, discovers a crime and reports it to Lamb, the young agent is instantly discouraged by the grouchy boss-man. In other words, Slow Horses is a story of underdogs, agents who the world never hears of, unless they prove themselves. But when he finds out about a hostage situation, he decides to look further into it and get back on the field, so he can right the wrong and prove his merit to MI5. Every new episode will release weekly on Fridays. The final episode of Slow Horses will be released on April 29, 2022. Jackson Lamb – Played by Gary Oldman, Lamb is the head of Slough House and boss of a bunch of failed agents. Lamb is a disenchanted and disgruntled employee and as miserable as a boss can be. The video introduces the audience to Slough House, and we see a bunch of demotivated employees, who have turned up in this dumping ground of failed MI5 agents, otherwise called the slow horses. The trailer also introduces us to the department’s boss, Jackson Lamb, played by Gary Oldman. Lamb seems to be the most miserable of all, bored to death with this life and job, and has absolutely no interest whatsoever in improving it or that of others. That is to say, you’ll probably see a very dull and drab side of MI5 but one that is equally thrilling once you get into it. The plot follows an MI5 agent, who fails his training mission and is sent to the Slough House in a paper-pushing, keyboard-thumping role until he discovers something dangerous that could threaten the entire nation. And if you want to know everything there is to know about this all-new series, check out our handy guide with all the latest information on the release date, plot, cast, characters, and more of Slow Horses.

Slow Horses, streaming on Apple TV Plus, and adapted from the book by Mick Herron, follows a crew of underachieving spies as they get in over their heads.

What it needs is twists that are carefully placed and not overplayed, a sense of urgency, a sense of place, and charismatic characters. Slow Horses is a solid, purposeful spy thriller that hits all the notes you want it to hit. While Oldman may have been cast for his buttoned-down Smiley, here he’s back in a mode he spent much of his early career in — cursing obnoxiously in a thick London accent — and he’s clearly relishing playing to type. River resolves to do something, and the other “Slow Horses” get dragged into it — including Lamb, who, as Tavener warns darkly, is “burned out for a reason” and may not be as incompetent as he seems. Finding out, one by one, what fatal flaw condemned these losers to Slough House, and watching them overcome those flaws and build a reluctant family, is a great formula for uncomfortable comfort TV. Slow Horses uses MI5’s domestic agenda to look inward at the fault-lines in British society and the way unscrupulous journalists, politicians — and, yes, spies — are exploiting them for their own ends. Slow Horses is a fairly close adaptation of the 2010 spy novel of the same name by Mick Herron, the first in Herron’s “Slough House” series about a crew of underachieving spies in MI5, the domestic arm of the British intelligence services. The producers surely cast Gary Oldman, in part, to summon the memory of his performance as George Smiley (scientifically proven to be the greatest British fictional spy) in the 2011 film of Le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Slow Horses is written and produced by Will Smith (no, not that one), a former stand-up comedian who has worked closely with Armando Ianucci on UK political satire The Thick of It and Ianucci’s follow-up take on U. S. politics, Veep. Apple may be hoping that, in Smith, it has found its version of Succession creator Jesse Armstrong: another Ianucci-adjacent British writer with a cynical worldview and taste for bitter absurdity. Chafing at the menial tasks he’s given, and itching to serve his country, River’s curiosity is aroused when his deskmate Sid (Olivia Cooke) is sent to steal files from a right-wing journalist. But when a training exercise ends in disaster, River finds himself banished to Slough House, a dingy purgatory for the Service’s unwanted strays, overseen by slobby has-been Jackson Lamb (Oldman). They’re not bad enough to give the sack, but not good enough to give anything important to do.

Suppose you fail at spycraft working under MI:5's number two, Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas). In that case, you end up at Slough House (those familiar ...

Even during the scenes of office comedy, the dialogue is quick and quick-witted, peppered with well-timed insults and barely disguised contempt. Nearly everything on-screen feels old and ill-used, droopy with time and lack of attention, not unlike Oldman’s Lamb. Yet, whenever the story heads to MI:5’s headquarters, the sets shine with sterile cleanliness and a sense of the state of the art. Then there’s the suggestion that MI:5 is tapping Slough to run surveillance on an especially infamous target. Try as he might, though, he can’t make all the pieces fit. The title refers to a term of derision given to agents who bust out of MI:5. For instance, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) ends up amongst the sluggish equine after botching the show’s opening mission. At the start, Slow Horses does have a bit of the rhythm and tone of a British workplace dramedy.

The cast of Slow Horses, left to right: Stephen Waddington, Dustin Demri-Burns, Freddie Fox, Rosalind Eleazar, Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Jonathan Pryce, ...

Having attended last weekend’s "slapgate" Oscars, where his film Don’t Look Up was nominated for Best Picture, Adam McKay is probably still picking his jaw off the floor. This is a crisis situation – and an opportunity for Lamb to prove himself to his boss (Kristin Scott Thomas). Having attended last weekend’s "slapgate" Oscars, where his film Don’t Look Up was nominated for Best Picture, Adam McKay is probably still picking his jaw off the floor.