Slow Horses: The Spies Who Disenchant Themselves

The third season of "Slow Horses" concludes with a thrilling and delightful drama of a desperate counterattack. Those kind-hearted Slow Horses return to the cluttered and dilapidated Slough House with rusty door handles, where their office is located, and work with a laid-back attitude as they await the next unexpected mission to save the world. In this season, all the agents of the British Security Service (aka MI5) turn into villains. In the end, most of them meet their demise, while their leader, Director-General Ingrid, whose conspiracy is exposed, is forced to step down from his position and leave MI5. This causes the complete collapse of the mysterious British intelligence agency’s image.

In fact, since the start of this TV series and even in its original novels, the goal has been to tarnish MI5’s reputation. MI5 does not have any extraordinary futuristic technology/“black technology” but only big and bright office spaces similar to any building in the CBD. In the main working area, there is no M sitting there worrying about the country, its people, and humanity; M is not waiting for the charming James Bond to occasionally come by, take on tasks, and then solve troubles. Instead, there are two strong capable career women engaged in a power play. The purpose of adapting the novels into a TV series is to fundamentally destroy this bureaucratically bloated institution.

It's as if the authors and directors had to use magic to defeat magic. They seem to want to get rid of the institution entirely and their method of doing so is, surprisingly, to create an ugly impression of it by setting up a peripheral department within it. This department is the Slough House, which is located 5 kilometers away from the MI5 office building and serves as a refuge for failed agents. The agents in the series are not all-round, omnipotent heroes; they are ordinary office workers who have caused trouble or developed bad habits and cannot be dismissed under labor laws. Hence, they are sent to Slough House to declutter it and transport cargo.

And their department head, Jackson Lamb, takes the disenchantment with the spy image to the extreme. The "versatile best actor" Gary Oldman portrays this character as a scruffy old man who doesn't like to bathe, wears socks with holes, has bad breath, and farts. Yet, Lamb is also domineering, decisive, and incredibly smart. He always handles everything with composure, resolves all problems and deals with those who create problems in ways that his subordinates cannot comprehend.

In a series with densely packed crucial plot points, if there is a long gap between the broadcasts of its episodes, it's easy for the audience to forget the previous events. However, due to the "disenchanted" core character Lamb and the unique personas of his subordinates, there's no need to review past synopses. Viewers can easily follow these memorable characters into their respective storylines and behavioral logic in the new season.

These exiled agents from the Slough House, which is phonetically similar to "Slow Horse," include the courageous but reckless River Cartwright, the alcoholic and melancholic Catherine Standish, Louisa Guy who seeks one-night stands to compensate for the loss of her loved one, the tech-savvy Roddy Ho who constantly invades others' privacy, and the drug taking and gambling duo Shirley and Marcus, which was almost dismissed by Lamb. None of them comes close to one-tenth of Bond’s looks and abilities. They are not the kind of Mr. Bean-like agents who succeed by blind chance, and some of their colleagues may face unfortunate outcomes.

In this new season, the Slow Horses unexpectedly gain allies by turning their enemies into friends. They are avengers who, at the beginning of the series, were determined to return to their homeland and seek justice after the Istanbul incident led to the "suicide" of intelligence personnel. They endured humiliation and infiltrated an outsourced intelligence company, where they swiftly penetrated the MI5 through an unannounced "headquarters defense network breach test," and forced the organization back to its original state where it is nice and orderly outside but decaying inside. Of course, the situation in reality is not much different. Companies that hire large numbers of mercenaries for high costs, such as America’s Blackwater and the renowned Wagner in Russia, have combat capabilities much stronger than the national defense forces composed of salaried conscripts.

In the previous two seasons, Spider Webb, who always clashed with the Slow Horses and particularly enjoyed picking on the second male lead, Cartwright, was dismissed by the MI5 headquarters due to improper intelligence analysis and handling. In this new season, he cunningly pretends to be unemployed and pitiful, but transforms himself, joins a powerful mercenary group, and continues to taunt the Slow Horses. Of course, as usual, the writers always enjoy letting the villain succeed first and then watching them fall from grace.

As for the first male lead, Lamb, who is self-destructively sculpted by Oldman, remains invincible in the new season. All the agents at the headquarters both hate and fear him, and every scheme they devise is accurately predicted by him.

"How does Lamb know?" is a question that always baffles people.

"Oh, God knows. He seems to know everything," is always the answer.

The three seasons of TV series that thoroughly disenchant espionage have also given rise to a new kind of allure unrelated to appearance—Oldman-style wisdom.