'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.

(*Weren’t they trying to do that already? That’s why Harkness’ French boys tried to take out David Cartwright and Chapman.)

A strength of this episode is how much the story is driven by people over 60. We get a delightful debrief with Taverner and Jackson, changing their usual canalside meetup spot to a rainy alleyway. Even though she’s caught up on the River switch, she’s still at a loose end; finding either Cartwright or Jackson basically is an admission that Whelan and Flyte operate without her oversight. 

Chapman knows why Harkness is after him: as David’s bagman, he was sent on an extraction mission to Les Abres in France, where a young Harkness and his mercenaries stripped the car of cash, IDs, and other “cold body” stuff. Chapman was tasked with smuggling a young woman back into England who didn’t look overly thrilled about leaving Les Arbres. (It struck Chapman as odd because the whole place had a horrific vibe. Why were there mothers and children there?!) When Chapman got her to England, she gave him the slip at a gas station, never to be seen again. This cockup put the reputation of Chapman’s boss on the line; David didn’t necessarily seem surprised at how things played out.

After a brief regroup, Jackson, Chapman, and Catherine try to recapture David Cartwright before he confesses his history with Harkness to First Desk. They luck out, as his dementia directs him to the old MI5 HQ, now a swanky 5-star hotel.* David sits in the lobby waiting for a meeting that will never come, and Chapman squirrels away his former boss (whose nickname was “the old bastard”) just as Flyte’s dogs swoop in to collect him. David Cartwright has turned into the MacGuffin of Season 4, an object of prime importance who, due to his illness, does very little himself.

(Probably the best joke of the season is Jackson saying that even after the detention cells were turned into saunas, they still hold the same amount of Russians.)

River returns home via the Eurostar. (Fun fact: The trip to London arrives five minutes before it leaves Paris.) He is immediately pursued by Flyte’s dogs upon arriving, barely making it out of St Pancras station – but they know he’s heading to his grandfather’s. Here, he gets confirmation that David has been to Les Abres via hidden photographs of the attractive mural he found in the crumbling French manor, but Flyte catches him in the final moments of the episode. 

Harkness sends one of his boys after Chapman, who goes to a secret hiding place to retrieve his “flight fund,” an emergency pack of cash to help him flee when he’s in danger – The Park won’t be happy that he’s the inciting incident behind the shopping center bombing. Chapman doesn’t rat out on any of his fellow brothers but does die a horrid, messy death. 

Another welcome change in “Returns” is how central Taverner feels. After being rebuffed by Jackson, Taverner calls in Flyte to give some sincere but icy advice to do whatever she tells her to do, noting how their shared experience with gender discrimination in the security sector means she’s softer on Emma than other dogs. Then, when Taverner gets chewed out by Whelan, she snaps back and mercilessly cuts him down for being a useless wet blanket. 

(I wonder how much James Callis modeled his performance on Britain’s current charisma-free Prime Minister…?) 

But in voicing her right to do whatever she wants, Taverner repeats the same worrisome defense of national intelligence agencies that goes back to the days of John le Carré and Ian Fleming – that the only people capable of protecting the country are highly skilled people with way too much power who cannot be held meaningfully accountable by outside bodies. Sure, this is good when you’re in a fake spy world where threats like Blofeld or a million different terrorist cells are trying to kill the United Kingdom, but that’s a fantasy that appeals to book readers. 

Taverner is spouting quasi-fascist rhetoric that makes Whelan feel like a total strawman. If you thought Slow Horses’ grounded, underdog angle would have given it a more radical ideological edge, it’s best to remember that this show would rather entertain than actually deconstruct the power imbalances of espionage—or how elitist ideology has ruled British spy fiction since its inception. 

This lack of ambition is the ultimate disappointment of this series – there’s nothing going on besides entertainment. It’s all good if you want a show you can recommend to anybody (and you should!), but it shows that Slow Horses is less interested in challenging the beliefs and mechanics of spy television. It’s much happier being its next big hit.

Slow Horses Season 4 continues with weekly episodes streaming on Wednesdays on Apple TV+.