'Slow Horses' Season 4 Kicks off a Double Dose of "Identity Theft" When "A Stranger Comes to Town"

It once looked like Severance would become Apple TV+’s siren’s call to new subscribers, but by the time Season 2 premieres in January 2025, three years will have passed since its first season finale. By contrast, the streamer’s most reliable show, Slow Horses, has consistently delivered a new 6-episode season within 12 months of the previous one concluding; Slow Horses premiered a mere month after Severance, and we’re now on Season 4. In terms of efficiency, there’s no beating it and the consistently entertaining spy romps have earned the last season – which was confident but muddled – a whopping 9 Emmy nominations.

Does Season 4 reveal any cracks in the dependable, gets-the-job-done-and-then-some formula? Not in the opening pair of episodes, which hits its marks with assured precision. Our big bad of the season (teased as a beardy Hugo Weaving) has appeared only briefly by the end of episode two, but the stakes are clear: domestic terror has hit London, and a pre-packaged MI5 spy identity has been used to do it. Judging by a couple of effects-heavy beats and stylish filmmaking, it looks like the Slow Horses budget has been upped – a deserving reward for the misfits of Slough House, where every fuck-up and reject from British Intelligence has something to prove.

Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), tech wizard and the annual winner of Slow Horses’ Most Annoying Character award, has been pranked. River told him they were having a Christmas party at a fast-food chicken joint, but he’s the only one who turned up, which is ostensibly pitiable, but, for Roddy haters like me, it’s cathartic. Anyway, Roddy fails to notice an explosion in the city center, but Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) – who is not First Desk, even after Ingrid Tierney’s deposement – is soon on the scene.

A car bomb went off at a busy shopping mall, and MI5 soon learns the culprit is Robert Winters (Zachary Hart). Regent’s Park thinks he was acting on his own. Ingrid’s replacement, Claude Whelan (James Callis), is clearly inexperienced and leans on Taverner to impress, even though he got the job on the promise of a significant culture shift at the Park. He’s either going to be fortified in the heat of battle or crumble under the slightest pressure – knowing that Slow Horses is first and foremost about how security institutions are full of pathetic people, I’m guessing it’ll be the latter.

David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce) is in the throes of dementia and determined to live alone at his well-armed country home instead of doing what River tells him to do and checking into a home. In his defense, River isn’t pressing the point, instead he’s complaining to Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar) about it over a lunchtime beer. Louisa wisely tells him to grow up and deal with it before it gets worse. One of the best moves in Season 3 was pushing Louisa to the forefront of the action; Eleazar has such sparky, smarmy chemistry with Lowden, and it’s great to see her join River in the center of the Slough House roster.

But disaster strikes: David becomes paranoid of an intruder, and shoots his grandson square in the chest with a shotgun – killing him. If you thought the reason why we never saw River’s face as he busied himself in his grandfather’s house was an artistic choice to add color to dementia’s cruel symptoms (like I did), think again! It was to disguise the fact that River is not dead, which Jackson figures out pretty quickly, even though he identifies the body as River to Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley), the Nick Duffy replacement du jour.

Elsewhere, Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) and Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan) are practicing waterboarding techniques back at Slough House (genuinely quite an unfunny bit and proof that Slow Horses doesn’t have an ironclad grip on its darker comedic tone), the new office administrator Moira Tregorian (the iconic Joanna Scanlan) is still adjusting to life at the bottom of the pecking order. There’s a quiet, tetchy newcomer, JK Coe (Tom Brooke).

Winters booby-trapped his threadbare apartment with grenades that immediately blew up the forensic investigators – another cock-up for Whelan’s early tenure. Back at Slough House, Roddy delicately lets everyone know that their colleague has been confirmed dead as he claims River’s computer for himself – as someone who also lost a close friend last season, poor Louisa takes it pretty hard.

But good news! David shoots a River lookalike, and while River fails to prevent his grandad from alerting the Park, he plants his belongings on “Alan Lockhead” (as his ID reveals), shoots off any recognizable facial features, and takes Alan’s train ticket to France to find the provincial village Alan has on a scrap of paper. Then River covertly runs off to Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) to keep David safe; it’s here that Jackson realizes the truth and lets everyone at Slough House down easily that River is alive, false alarm.

Jackson’s primary duty in Episode 2 centers on the new administrative arrival, Moira Tregorian. She’s weirdly professional and chipper for someone working at the grimmest place on earth, and Jackson reckons that she’s either screwed up back at the Park or Whelan has put her here to spy for him. Either way, he agrees to get her back to Park duties if she can find out what David Cartwright has to do with France at any point in his career.

Ah, the French! Back in remote France, River makes it to a stately country manor where he finds… a lot of private militia stuff. Training grounds, abandoned vehicles, firing ranges… and a photo of an older man, credited as Frank Harkness (Weaving), on a hunting trip with a few younger men – one of whom is Alan Lockhead. Before he can uncover more information, the building is set alight, and he gets into a violent scuffle with the man from the photo. It looks like he won’t make it out alive, but he’s rescued by a bearded French man who gives the air of someone who knows more about this miniature army base of operations.

Will Taverner be successful in concealing MI5’s complicity in this domestic terror outlet? How many people will Harkness have an old grudge with, and what’s with his cell of diehard young disciples? Will Shirley and Marcus do anything, or are they destined to be the most annoying characters on this show? Too many tantalizing questions lie before us, but with its double premiere, Slow Horses Season 4 wants us to know that it’s upgraded and ready to thrill all over again.

Slow Horses Season 4 continues with weekly episodes streaming on Wednesdays through October 2, 2024, on Apple TV+