Considering the events of last season, when the slobs-versus-snobs battle between Slough House and Regents Park escalated to career- and life-threatening treachery, it’s funny to witness the second season of Slow Horses start essentially at square one. That doesn’t mean the memories of Jackson Lamb’s rivalry with Diana Taverner are erased — or, for that matter, the undercard of River Cartwright and the weaselly James “Spider†Webb; rather, they’re added to the bitterness and cynicism that defines Lamb’s operation, which is a purgatory for gifted-but-disgraced spies who may never have an opportunity to level up (and, even if they did, may find the Park too unsavory a home in which to reside).
Still, here we are: New season, new book (Mick Herron’s 2013 novel Dead Lions, the second in his Slough House series), cleanish slate. The joke of the opening, however, is that nearly everyone is so deeply unhappy with their lot under Lamb that they’re not even showing up to the office. The ever-reliable Standish has resumed her post, as has Roddy Ho, the hacking “thoroughbred†who’s now grousing about having to share a cramped downstairs space with a new agent named Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards of Peaky Blinders). Elsewhere, however, River is out interviewing for a job at a private security firm, but his prospects are high comedy for his interrogators, who mostly want to plug him for Lamb stories, despite his role in rescuing Hassan last season. Louisa and Min have advanced to the looking-at-places phase of their romantic relationship and take a job from Webb to do security on a high-level Park meeting with a dissident Russian oligarch.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. As it moves into season two, the pleasures of Slow Horses are still solidly in place with writer Will Smith (no, not the slap guy) — who’d written four of the six episodes in the first season, including the premiere and finale — again setting the table confidently. Fans of the show can enjoy the continued build on established characters, but it’s more than possible to jump in on “Last Stop†and not miss much of anything, particularly given how efficiently Smith sets up the inciting incident and the lovably toxic dynamics at Slough House. It remains a juicy page-turner of a show.
The pre-credits opening sequence sets up the case that will occupy the season’s six-episode arc. (The Ringer critic Alison Herman, catching up with the show, smartly likened it to “24 with more farts and less fascism.â€) The middle-aged proprietor of an adult toy shop steps out into rainy London after catching a glimpse of a man in a flat hat that he recognizes from his past. As he pursues him from a professional distance, we learn via flashback that the man in the hat had tortured him in Berlin many years before. Though he seems to have the drop on him now, the chase ends on a replacement rail bus with our pursuers slumping in his chair and dying, but not before typing into his cell phone and tucking it into space between the seats and the window.
The deceased turns out to be Richard Bough, a retired field agent whose death is ruled a heart attack — a plausible fate, given his age and the occupational hazards of heavy smoking and booze. But Lamb isn’t comfortable with that explanation, not least because he fits his former colleague’s profile almost exactly. In a wonderfully silly bit of pretend — and a great introduction to Gary Oldman’s performance for those new to the show — Lamb pretends to be Bough’s brother, who’d “very much like to see the place from where he left this earth.†The charade continues once he gets directed to the bus and needs to weird out the driver enough to make him go away. “That’s how he would have wanted to go,†says Lamb with a long sigh. “He liked buses.†After finding Bough’s phone in the search that follows, Lamb unlocks a Notes app with a single word: “cicada.â€
Lamb knows the significance of the word, but Slow Horses smartly shifts that revelation over to River, as proof that the grandson of retired MI5 legend David Cartwright isn’t the fuckup his Slough House assignment would indicate. Then again, nepotism gives him a leg up sometimes. While chatting with his grandfather — played by Jonathan Pryce, whose occasional appearances on the show always add gravitas (and a little mischief) — River learns about “cicadas,†sleeper agents embedded in British society until they’re given the signal to activate. (So called because the insects spend years underground before hatching, as many learned when Brood X cicadas swarmed the Northeast last summer after 17 years in the earth.) The existence of “cicadas†was written off a hoax, invented by Russian spymaster Alexander Popov, despite Bough himself returning drunk and disheveled after going AWOL, claiming the Russians abducted him and forced brandy down his throat.
Now, it would appear that Bough was telling the truth, which casts more doubt on the possibility that he died of natural causes. The Slough House team turns its attention to the mystery man Bough was following, patching together the pursuit through a succession of public surveillance feeds. One missing piece at a data center gives the show the opportunity to show off Shirley’s formidable spycraft as she lifts an ID from a security guard in order to break into a data center and get the key footage they need. It also introduces an enjoyably frisky back-and-forth between Shirley and her cocky office mate Roddy, who leaves her stranded outside the entrance for a few minutes before cutting the power that will get her into the door.
Though a firm connection hasn’t been made yet, Louisa and Min’s side job arranging a secure MI5 meetup with a Russian dissident in a building called Glasshouse will surely get folded into the Bough-Popov-cicada plot sooner or later. If it unfolds like last season, Slow Horses will coil itself tightly around a single plot line with each character playing their part in the investigation rather than going off into unrelated side missions. It also seems likely that Webb and the Park aren’t finished with trying to play Slough House for fools, and Louisa and Min, who ran out of gas in pursuit of right-wing kidnappers last season, would be prime dupes. If all goes according to formula, however, the slobs stand a good chance to get the better of the snobs when it matters.
Shots
• Of all the agents at Slough House, Min is the one who still seems to belong there, given the reason he got the post (leaving top-secret material on public transit) and his general weakness and bungling last season. Perhaps a redemption arc is forthcoming. At least Louisa seems to respect him now.
• The back-and-forth between Lamb and River remains amusingly sharp, but Lamb has started to gain a grudging respect for the younger River’s instincts. For one, he surely believes the truth about the rigged mission that led to River’s Slough House assignment, but Lamb nods with genuine approval when River wagers 50 quid on the correct word Bough left on his cell phone.
• “You need a donkey for that, and I’m a thoroughbred.†Roddy may have a lousy office, but he has a heightened sense of his own worth. His casually paying off the pizza guy and working on a slice, knowing that Shirley is stranded outside the data center, is high comedy.
• River, regretting that he couldn’t give the private-firm interviewers the dirt on Lamb: “I should have told them you eat like a dying horse.â€