Chris Connor reviews the fourth episode of Slow Horses season 3…
After the bombshell ending of the previous episode and the sudden death of James ‘Spider’ Webb and the tiger team going rogue, the stakes are high throughout as he Slow Horses continue in their bid to stop the rogue team and find out the whereabouts of Catherine Standish who remains in captivity.
Sean Donovan and his allies seek the Grey Books, a set of documents that harbour conspiracy the government wouldn’t like the public to know about. Dame Ingrid and Peter Judd discuss the fallout of the incident, marking the second episode to open with discussions between the pair. Surprisingly in this season to date, Ingrid’s role has exceeded that of Diana Taverner’s, and we can surely expect Kristin Scott Thomas to have a more prominent role as the season comes to a crescendo.
Tierney and Lamb share scenes as she looks to recruit Slough House to help reel in the tigers and clean up the mess of the opening few episodes. Tierney plans to let the tigers get access to the Grey Books and set the dogs on them, however it eventually becomes clear its not simply the Grey Books they want but proof Alison Dunn was murdered by MI5. This episode gives us more fleshing out of what happened to Sean Donovan before kidnapping Standish, filling in some of the blanks from the opening sequence in Istanbul in the first episode and giving the events more weight.
In terms of the Slow Horses themselves Louisa and River continue to be a standout pair, with Jack Lowden and Rosalind Eleazar a fine pair sharing a heart-to-heart about Min’s death at the tail end of the episode, Louisa still clearly affected by it. Shirley and Marcus meanwhile wonder if Lamb’s jape about them being sacked will hold up (what could be worse than getting fired from Slough House?).
Another subplot sees a belated introduction to this season for Jonathan Pryce’s David Cartwright, who is struggling to get into a club he is adamant he is a member of. This is a major plot in the books and looks to have been brought forward but it will likely form a key arc for River in the next season and the remainder of this one.
This is another relentless episode as the plot continues to thicken and all sides seemingly converge on the storage facility, who will make it out alive? The next two episodes promise some all-out action and a race against time. This season continues to prove why Slow Horses is head and shoulders above other espionage series’ and hopefully can stick the landing in its final two episodes.
Chris Connor
