TV review: Slow Horses Season 6

Slow Horses Season 6 just keeps the drama coming.

Six seasons in, Slow Horses has no business being this good. Season 6 is its tensest run yet and, for me, it's among the show's best.

Squeezing two Mick Herron novels, Joe Country and Slough House, into six episodes could have left things bloated. Instead, it plays like one long held breath. With GRU agents picking off current and former Slow Horses one by one, and MI5 conveniently looking the other way, the story unfolds across a tightly compressed stretch of time. Nobody gets a quiet night to regroup; every decision lands on top of the last, and the momentum from the opening episode carries right through to a finale that had me sat in silence as the credits rolled.

It's also a River season. Jack Lowden's River Cartwright is the closest thing the show has to a protagonist, and putting him back in the middle of things pays off, with Lowden at his most bruised and rattled. The rest of the team take more of a back seat, but that makes the time they spend together as a big group count for more.

Two faces return, and they're welcome ones. Rosalind Eleazar's Louisa Guy is great fun to have back, but Olivia Cooke's Sid Baker is the real highlight. Sid hasn't been seen since the first season in 2022, and Cooke gets plenty to work with as she comes to terms with finding herself on the wrong side of the Park. She and Lowden have an easy chemistry that lifts every scene they share.

Kristin Scott Thomas's Diana Taverner gets a storyline to match. As First Desk she's at the peak of her career, yet she's never been less in control. She gets accidentally blackmailed by a right-wing "independent journalism" outlet, and the cruelty of it is that all her power is useless against it. Watching someone so polished and cold lose her grip is a treat, and Scott Thomas plays it close to the chest while still letting the panic show.

The outlet's owner, Damien Cantor, is played by Harry Lloyd, and it's perfect casting. I've been a fan since his Doctor Who guest spot in 2007 and his turn as Viserys Targaryen in Game of Thrones in 2011, and Cantor draws on the same strengths. He's slimy and arrogant, but there's a desperate edge under the swagger that makes him far more unpredictable than a simple bully. Lloyd lets you see a man who has stumbled into something bigger than he can control, and that fear is exactly what makes him a threat.

Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb is, as ever, a highlight. There's not much left to say other than that he's still disgustingly hilarious. This season he gets a new sparring partner in Lenny Rush as Reece Nesmith, and the two meet on the same wavelength in several scenes. Both are crude, quick and utterly unbothered, so neither can intimidate the other, which makes for some of the funniest exchanges of the season.

Hugo Weaving returns as Frank Harkness, River's father, and he eats up every scene he's in. Weaving has such an aura that he's compelling even when the script is doing the heavy lifting, and the fast-food face-off with Lamb is a lovely nod to Heat.

That brings me to my one grip with the season. Most of the villains are naff at their jobs. Kyle Soller and MyAnna Buring's hitmen, Jim and Jane, are creepy company, but the dialogue keeps telling us how lethal they are, as it does with Harkness, without the action fully backing it up. The show does a decent job of justifying how our ragtag heroes slip out of harm's way, but a couple of times it asked me to believe a little too much. For the most part this was never enough to squander the perfectly crafted tension, but it got a little close to comfort on occassion.

For me, the visuals are the season's best asset. Director Adam Randall and cinematographer Eben Bolter find striking images everywhere. Aerial shots and fixed lenses mounted on vehicles make even a simple car journey feel suffocating. The team have always known how to get the most out of a groggy London scene, whether it's a funeral or a motorway service station.

The soundtrack has never been better. Daniel Pemberton and Toydrum, who have said each season gets its own sound, have gone somewhere ambient and unnerving this time. Pitch-shifting synth pads and distorted percussion and guitar clangs gave me serious Boards of Canada, Burial, and Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II vibes. Set against the beautifully glum visuals, the uneasy textures keep you off balance, so even the quiet scenes feel like something is about to go wrong.

Overall, Season 6 is a gripping, handsome and often very funny run, and the flaws barely dent it. If you want to give the score and those visuals the setup they deserve, hit up your local Richer Sounds this Black Friday for a new TV or soundbar and settle in.