Apple TV+ Releases First Footage of 'Slow Horses' Season 5

It took a good five years, but Apple TV+ is finally coming into its own. The streaming service that launched in 2019 with a laughable four shows on offer (and zero library of past hits to support it) really didn't know what it was doing when it started. However, several key hiring decisions later (including the man who made HBO the powerhouse it is today, Richard Plepler), Apple TV+ has finally managed a sustainable run of culturally relevant and impactful releases for 2025, from Severance to The Studio. With an actual viewership base, it will now bring back sleeper hit Slow Horses and the still-struggling Foundation to see how they fare.,

Apple spent its first few years offering up original series that were clearly meant to ape previous hit prestige TV shows, but which barely made an impact on audiences. Foundation is from those earliest years, a high-budget, low-viewership series based on the classic Isaac Asimov series of short stories. The series features high-end British actors, including Jared Harris, Alexander Siddig, Alfred Enoch, and Philip Glenister. For its third season, the show will add PBS favorites like Leo Bill (Funny Woman) and recognizable stars from other fantasy fare, such as Pilou Asbæk (Game of Thrones).

It remains to be seen if the series can finally draw the attention it deserves now that Apple has subscribers' attention. However, considering how much better the company has gotten at marketing in the past six months, I wouldn't count it out.

Slow Horses, on the other hand, is one of the very few series on Apple that managed to become a hit despite the streaming service's early missteps. The combination of adapting a popular best-selling series, featuring one of the U.K.'s main A-listers, Gary Oldman, in the lead role, and breakout performances from Jack Lowden, Saskia Reeves, and Rosalind Eleazar, turned this show into the sleeper hit it is today. 

Ted Lasso may have received the higher-profile attention, but the comedy series crashed and burned after two seasons and is now returning for a Season 4 that no one wanted. Slow Horses, meanwhile, is already filming Season 6 with an eye on finishing out adapting all of Mick Herron's novels in the series, and Apple TV+ already has a spinoff in the works with Down Cemetery Road, based on Herron's Zoë Boehm series, starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson.

Finally, there's Chief of War, the new Hawaiian period drama produced by and starring Jason Momoa, who was also the central actor in one of Apple's highest-profile flops, See. While the new show is in line with where period dramas are currently headed, it's hard not to see this passion project as Apple's way of making amends to Momoa for how poorly received See was. It remains to be seen whether the new show will be more like Slow Horses or Foundation, but regardless of its performance with audiences, it's got to be better than See.

Foundation Season 3 premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday, July 11, 2025, followed by Chief of War on Friday, August 1, 2025, and finally Slow Horses Season 5 on Wednesday, September 24, 2025. All three will drop two episodes on premiere day, with one episode to follow each week.