'Slow Horses' "Returns" to Its Best Form

After some mild complaints about the breathless, propulsive pacing of Slow Horses, “Returns” proves an apt title for a decisive episode in a season that felt unmoored as it crossed the halfway mark. The fourth episode did not give us all the answers we anticipated, but it gave us enough to feel like we were not being strung along until the finale. More than that, it gives the suspense sequences a much-needed urgent, focused drive – we finally feel inside the action rather than just observing it.

After Jackson Lamb, Sam Chapman, Shirley, and Marcus briefly recuperate in the battered black cab from last week’s climax, we join Frank Harkness for what feels like it should be a flashback but is not signaled as such in the story. Something about the chronology feels bungled. He’s meeting up with Tahir (Khalid Kaith), a foreign royal dignitary who contracted Harkness & Sons to do a hit in the West Acres parking lot but make it look like an accident – and instead, a giant bomb went off very publically. Harkness blames a miscommunication, but Tahir threatens him with torture and murder.

It’s an excellent way to finally spend time with this season’s villain – fighting for his life – and after groveling, begging to work pro bono for Tahir, Harkness uses his leverage: his links to the MI5 agents who know about his operation that could cause trouble down the line. Tahir tells him to kill them and then work exclusively for him.* If this isn’t a flashback, is this just a raising of the stakes that confirms they should keep doing what they’re doing? Harkness says as much in a meeting with one of his French sons in a London bar that’s so dingy I mistook it for an evil lair. It turns out that’s just what boring pubs look like in London these days.