Slow Horses

Season 5 is the best run of Slow Horses yet. It made me gasp, thrilled me throughout, had me laughing out loud, and included one of the most tonally audacious scenes I've seen on TV in a long time.

Invigorating in its temerity, Smith’s six-episode Season 5 is told with propulsive clarity (save for the mysteries you’re intended to guess at). Chaos is sorted into appreciable story arcs without diluting its overwhelming effect on our heroes.

Slow Horses is unafraid to stick with what makes it unique. Few shows weave together competing storylines so effectively, stopping and starting just as our attention wanes. Even the brief crumbs about male rage and violent rhetoric inspiring violent political acts are cleverly, but clearly, woven in.

The mystery of the villain this season is intriguing, and culminates in a hugely satisfying twist in later episodes. That being said, some viewers will become impatient with that dynamic and miss the presence of a big baddie like Weaving’s, plotting schemes and chewing up scenery. .... But best of all is the surprisingly effective melancholy giving bite to the dark humored banter between the main Slough House cast.

If the season holds back on the fireworks and fights, it compensates with more narrative and comedic and even dramatic justice than the pleasantly pessimistic series typically delivers.

Slow Horses continues to be fun to watch because of Oldman’s crusty performance and the agents at Slough House working together so well despite not exactly being friends. It’s a chemistry that works for this show, and can sustain it for a number of seasons beyond this one.

The first episode of the new series suggests we’re in for another darkly comic thrill ride as good as any of the previous outings.

Despite those quibbles, you know what you’re getting with Slow Horses. The performances remain superb, the script is as sharp as they come, and the comedy/action balance is handled beautifully.

At times, you worry that this part of the story is veering into caricature .... Still, it is glorious fun, a taut, twisty and enjoyable thriller laced with so many funny moments.

If Slow Horses Season 5 proves anything, it's that even an installment of this show that favors a back-to-basics approach is still definitely worth tuning in for.

While the pace never falters, the jokes still land, and the performances remain top-notch, after spending four seasons with these lovable delinquents, one can’t help but also wonder if these characters will ever evolve.

[Feels] 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. .... But that doesn’t make any of this less delightful to watch, maybe just less fulfilling.

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 main problem here, though, is that the plot pinballs around far too much, and far too frivolously.

Its slovenly, sarcastic personalities still carry the day, but with its comedy veering into cartoonishness, it proves a wobbly return engagement.