‘Slow Horses’ Sweats the Small Stuff
An otherwise reasonably smart spy show offers up a shambolic caper as its centerpiece, proving that making up stories is harder than it looks.
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It’s a simple fact of life that the most realistic spy fiction is the stuff where people sit in offices all day sorting through documents, or spend their time doggedly researching things, not the sort where good-looking people dash about shooting guns and dangling off planes and looking absolutely at home in foreign casinos1. Espionage might be sexy and exciting sometimes, sure, but the real work is kind of dull2. And it takes some exceptional writing to make it otherwise (see le Carré, John).
Slow Horses on Apple TV (based on the novels by Mick Herron) tries to have it both ways, and largely succeeds. The burned-out, incompetent, and deprecated MI5 agents who work at Slough House under the cranky, despotic leadership of uber-burnout Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman3) largely do sit in offices and push paper, but that’s mainly because they’re not to be trusted with anything of real importance. But some of the agents, like River Cartwright4 (Jack Lowden), are actually quite good in the field and the story gives them ample opportunity to fire weapons, rough people up, and engage in other exciting espionage-y stuff.
This is a fun show. The premise—fuckup MI5 agents relegated to a dead end posting are drawn into real work to save their own asses5—is terrific, and the show proceeds with a fair amount of smarts and wit. But even good writing sometimes gets tripped up by the requirements of a plot, and the caper at the center of Slow Horses’ first season is a prime example, because there’s so much hand-waving you can practically see the actors hovering an inch off the ground.
London Rules: Cover Your Ass
As with most spy stories, the plot of Slow Horses Season One is a bit complex, so I won’t try to summarize it here. Suffice to say that the Horses are in trouble, pursued by MI5, and their salvation hinges on retrieving an incriminating photo from an office in MI5’s (fictional) headquarters at Regent’s Park6. So, naturally, they come up with a complex plan to pull off a heist. Which is a lot of fun! But also, unfortunately, does not in any way hold up to scrutiny7.
In a nutshell, Lamb arrives at the Park driving a service car he’d previously stolen from some MI5 folks. He makes a stink about not getting out of the car, but eventually gives in and is taken up to the office of Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), the Deputy Director General of MI5, where they spar a bit and he eventually claims that he placed a bomb in the back of the car. Taverner sends a squad to check it out, but the bomb is just a distraction so River can sneak into the building. Once inside, he heads to the office of James “Spider” Webb (Freddie Fox) to beat on Spider a bit and find the photo. The Park goes into lock down, and River finds the photo just as the guards arrive, but when they get to Webb’s office there’s just one man on the floor wearing a balaclava8.
Cut to Taverner’s office, where she’d about to burn Lamb and the Slow Horses but then River walks in, slaps the file on her desk, and ho! The tables are turned.
This is Faux Clever writing, because none of it works. Lamb not being violently extracted from the car, the car not being given even a cursory search9, River somehow finding the right file via guesswork in about 10 minutes, the guards not bothering to check who, exactly, they have in custody and just assuming the man with his face hidden is River, Taverner not simply grabbing the file and calling for assistance—it’s a Jenga tower shaking on a foundation of a single tile, one of those plot twists that only works if you don’t think about it even a little bit10.
Working with You Has Been the Lowest Point In a Disappointing Career
None of this makes Slow Horses less entertaining, unless you’re me, a miserable asshole who can’t help analyze everyone’s writing (except his own!) for flaws. In fact, this rickety sequence is written as well as it could be to hide some of these flaws under a sheen of what we call in the business panache11. You wouldn’t notice the underlying ridiculousness unless you were, again, a trained miserable asshole12.
But I think stuff like this undermines a story in subliminal ways—that readers and viewers notice it on some level, and it can linger. Have I written a lazy sequence or two in my time? I’ll never say, but yes13. Sometimes you’re so fucking close to being done with a story and all that stands between you and a celebratory whiskey is an action scene that you’re not sure how to navigate, so you just throw something together. Then, via a mysterious process, that ramshackle scene puts down roots and somehow becomes the official scene, and then you get that last advance check and you’re stuck14.
My standard strategy for breaking into secure locations and stealing data remains concealing myself in a cardboard box and hiring someone to deliver me. It has never worked once, and yet isn’t it interesting that I’ve had occasion to try?
NEXT WEEK: Mythic Quest and the doom of (fictional) men.
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This is the real reason I never became a spy: The boredom. Not because I run like a poorly-programmed robot, or sweat more than normal men, or fear physical pain more than most. Or the fact that no spy agency ever recruited me, the bastards.
That’s the secret of the universe: All work is boring. The moment you realize this is the moment you start planning your funeral. Mine will have whiskey. Hogsheads of it.
Brilliant, as always. You can literally see Lamb physically convulse every time he farts on screen. You think I’m kidding. It’s subtle, but it’s there. That’s acting, kiddos.
Ah character names: They be hard.
As a man whose continuing employment during 18 years of shambolic, incompetent office work remains the great mystery of his life, I feel this show on many levels.
We’re fast approaching the moment where video and photo evidence will no longer matter at all, and then I can breathe a sigh of relief and stop worrying about those photos of me from college. Which don’t exist, so don’t go looking for them. Seriously, don’t.
Much like my haircut.
That’s just a tenth of the plot, and I’m out of breath. Spy stories get twisted.
BY MI5 AT THEIR DAMN HEADQUARTERS!! It’s like I’m in charge of security there.
Luckily for my enjoyment of this show, my specialty is not thinking about things.
I used to have panache. Now all I have is paunch. <laughs unsteadily>
As most writers are, ami right? Wait, why is no one agreeing with me? Why is everyone looking off into the distance?
Someday I will compile all my shittiest writing into a novel and sell it, and make you all suffer.
But at least you can afford more whiskey, so … bright side.
Every time I see or hear the word "panache", I think of Jon Lovitz, and every sketch he did in SNL.