'Slow Horses' Season 5 Gets Going with “Tall Tales”

Each season of Slow Horses is a serial, one unfolding story divided into serialized chapters, with very few time jumps and surprising plot turns that lead us straight from one episode into another. When the dramatic inciting incident kicks in – in Season 5’s case, a mass shooting that left 11 dead in a residential London square – a countdown begins, and our hapless Slough House agents are running against the clock and an increasing intensity of obstacles until they’re eaten alive. Slow Horses has lively characters, but not rich ones; the show’s success is primarily due to its brilliant pacing, as every scene further advances the plot or underscores the stress of characters trying to navigate this universe.

This is not the first Slow Horses episode set at night, where the agents scramble to stay alive and (more importantly) stay off of the Park’s radar – the episode recalls “Visiting Hours” from Season 1, or the overwrought climax of Season 3. We pick up seconds after last week’s episode, with Roddy going back up to his apartment after his suspicious girlfriend, Tara, tipped off his anonymous assassins that he was alone. 

Roddy suspects someone is in his flat, arms himself with a massive World of Warcraft replica sword – but it’s only Jackson Lamb doing a house call. Apparently, he’s taken Catherine seriously. If you find Roddy as annoying as this reviewer, then this tense opening is an excellent simulation of being a member of Slough House; as tempting as it may sound, we have to begrudgingly admit that it’s not great for Roddy to be murdered.

Someone does try to kill Roddy, despite Shirley standing watch on the street corner. She’s distracted by her cocaine baggy and thinking about Marcus – I don’t want to tell a recovering addict what to do, but it’s probably bad to have drugs on you to trigger a guilt-grief response to keep you sober. 

She soon springs into action: Jackson and Roddy fight off his assassin (Yusuf Chaudhri), throwing him over the balcony and injuring him pretty badly. He skulks away as more assailants open fire on Roddy’s flat, and Shirley gives chase to the injured assassin, but after tussling in a skate park underpass, he gives her the slip. Everyone’s alive, but this altercation is not a clean victory for Slough House.

Inside the van, we meet our assassins, a group of Arab men led by Farouk (Monty Ben), who were behind the Abbotsfield shooting and only attacked Roddy so the MI5 would go looking for him. Roddy’s assassin is suffering badly from his wounds, and in lieu of taking him to a hospital, Farouk kills him and leaves his burning body in a quiet, remote lane. Later in the episode, they rendezvous with some environmental activists to supply them with a chemical weapon. These activists are hilariously and cringingly telegraphed with the usual hallmarks of “green hair,” “nose ring,” and “white person with dreads”. 

(Unrelated, but showrunner Will Smith and Slow Horses novelist Mick Herron are aged 54 and 62 respectively.)

As per Park protocol, an attack on any agent must be reported to superiors so a proper investigation can get underway. This is typically the last thing Jackson Lamb wants to do, so he takes Roddy to a splashy penthouse restaurant in central London to hide out and plan next steps. JK Coe (Tom Brooke) collects River for a house call on Tara, but the elderly Polish woman who answers the door makes it clear that she doesn’t live there. 

(Although we see Tara watching with baited breath from the window, she’s likely been coerced into this scheme.)

At the skyscraper restaurant, Jackson is giving River the cold shoulder, nobody is happy with each other, and Roddy still doesn’t believe he’s been honeytrapped – Tara and he are REAL, okay? Defeated, they slink back to Slough House. Picking back up with Taverner, she gets a surprise visit from former politician Peter Judd (Samuel West), who informs her that the Abbotsfield killings were committed with weapons that went missing from an arms fair. In exchange for this intel, he wants his arms manufacturer clients responsible for this slip-up to be kept out of the press – Taverner doesn’t put up much of a fight. 

With a full team of Dogs, including newcomer Devon Welles (Cherrelle Skeete), Taverner arrives at Slough House in the morning to take in Roddy and chastise Jackson for not following protocol. In Jackson’s defence, he didn’t know that the bullets fired at him and Roddy matched the Abbotsfield sniper, and Taverner makes it clear that Claude Whelan (James Callis), head of MI5, is this close to shutting down Slough House because of messy situations like these.

Claude gets a brief appearance jogging around Hampstead Heath, where a supposed ordinary member of the public turns out to be an employee of right-wing columnist Dodie Gimball (Victoria Hamilton), who’s dredging up old allegations of soliciting sex workers. 

Stay tuned for some didactic commentary on British media in the following episodes, not to mention some confused stuff about right and left-wing extremism threatening the stability of British intelligence – the final shot of a righteous, green-haired activist watching a car engine combust and posting a selfie with the caption “Petrol kills! Kill petrol!” is a highlight in Slow Horses’ history of eye-roll worthy political commentary.

Slow Horses Season 5 continues with new episodes every Wednesday through the end of October. Seasons 1 through 4 are streaming on Apple TV+, and Seasons 6 and 7 are already in production.