Slow Horses — Official Trailer | Apple TV
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Everybody's a villain here, except for the MI5 employees known as Slow Horses who have been exiled to Slough House, a small, seedy, three floor walk-up office building in a crummy part of London. All the action is at a higher level. On one side we have the Sons of Albion, a right-wing nationalist group. Over at Regent's Park we have Miss Stinky Pants Kristin Scott Thomas (Taverner). She's Deputy-Director of MI5, so she's got the power of the government behind her, in particular a tactical unit called the Dogs.
Pretty great show. MI5 - British version of the CIA, I guess - Gary Oldman (known by me as Zorg in The Fifth Element) is the disgustingly crusty old man running Slough House. First desk, AKA MI5 Director, is off on some diplomatic bullshit mission and while she's away Second Desk decides to cook up a false flag operation that will get blamed on the right-wing nationalists. She thinks this will give her an excuse to, in her words, "roll them all up". Her agent provocateur gets some white boys (three stooges) to kidnap a brown Briton who happens to be the nephew of some big shot in Pakistan, the idea being that when MI5 rescues him, it will help the Uncle feel more favorably toward Britain. Seems like a long shot to me, but you know you just can't trust those power hungry, liberal, white women with short blond hair like Hillary. Anyway, the plan goes awry and one of the white boys takes exception to Miss Stinky Pants' agent and lops off his head, so now when Miss Stinky Pants' dogs show up to rescue the hostage and kill the kidnappers, there's nobody there, well, except for the dead guy.
Menawhile, a very nervous reporter who has gotten wind of this fiasco, but since he has apparently fallen from grace he can't get anybody to listen to him. But somebody is interested in him, which gets our boy River interested, and since all he does at Slough House is busy work, he starts following the reporter around. Up till now, nothing very much is happening. But then River sees someone break into the reporter's house and now everything dissolves into chaos.
Season 1, 6 episodes, 45 minutes each.
Character notes:
Standish is Lamb's long suffering number 2
I question whether Sid is 'our girl' because she gets shot early on and we only see her once more in hospital and at the end Roddy and Jack find that all of the digital records of her have been erased, it's like she never existed, which is weird, but it kind of paves the way for her to return in later seasons. Or not, I dunno.
Note that the character names of the three stooges are in the fact the names of the Three Stooges. Ok Moe was actually an MI5 Agent sent in to stir up shit and Zeppo is technically a Marx Brother, but you get the idea.
2 comments:
A great show,well worth the time on a rainy day.
Not bad actually. Heard part on audiobook then read the dead tree version. May have turned out better as a one off than it will be as a series. Most good writers only have about 1.5 seasons of actual interesting ideas in them. Most hacks don't have the makings of a pilot ep.
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