rewrite this content and keep HTML tags This section is PresentedThis section was produced by the editorial department. The client was not given the opportunity to put restrictions on the content or review it prior to publication. by Paramount + Breadcrumb Trail LinksTelevisionPublished Nov 30, 2023 • 6 minute read Gary Oldman in a scene from Slow Horses. Photo by Apple TV+Article contentThe best spy thrillers are drab and a little hopeless.Advertisement 2This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLYSubscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESSubscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.REGISTER TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLESCreate an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Article contentThose who agree with me – and there are dozens of us – have probably already discovered “Slow Horses,” the Apple TV Plus drama about Slough House, the dilapidated office to which disgraced MI5 agents are sent to be verbally abused and routinely demoralized by the pungent, alcoholic misanthrope in charge. Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the brilliant grouch in question. And his talents have never, not even when he played George Smiley in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” been put to better use.Article contentThe series’s third season begins this week with an uncharacteristically action-packed sequence set in Istanbul that involves none of the principals but culminates in the death of an agent. The story picks up a year or so later, with the Slough House staff still moldering. The prospects of River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) have not improved after the mistakes he made in the second season, so he childishly revolts when Catherine Standish (the extraordinary Saskia Reeves) asks him to itemize some “Ringo-level” files no one will ever read before transferring them to a new facility. Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar) is still mourning the death of her partner, Min, while Roddy Ho, the office hacker (Christopher Chung) comes up with elaborate schemes to get her to sleep with him. Newer team members Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) and Marcus Longridge (Kadiff Kirwan) bond, a little unwillingly, as outsiders struggling with various addictions. And Lamb bullies his worried doctor into lying about how much he really drinks. He’s resigned to the consequences and is disinclined to change course.Advertisement 3This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article contentWhen one of the “horses” gets kidnapped, the others . . . react.The third season ratchets up the contrast between Slough House and its glitzy counterpart, the Park, where the agents are in good standing, the lights are bright and the staff is stylish, safe and well-funded. It is, however, contested domain, with Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her archrival and superior, MI5 Director Dame Ingrid Tearney (Sophie Okonedo), wrestling for control, and for the support of sleazy Home Secretary Peter Judd (Samuel West).It’s not exactly an upstairs/downstairs dynamic, but there is a vaguely classed split between those who care (and are disenfranchised) and those who don’t (and accrue power). The third season confirms, in ways sophomore seasons never quite can, what the show is really is about. “Slow Horses” is ultimately less invested in fake-outs (of which there are many) than it is in the fascinatingly artless conversations that expose them. By this I mean that even bitter antagonists on this show tend to operate with striking candor. People lie, certainly, but everyone is a little too jaded to keep up the pretense once the other has guessed the truth.Your Midday SunYour noon-hour look at what’s happening in Toronto and beyond.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.Thanks for signing up!A welcome email is on its way. If you don’t see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Your Midday Sun will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againArticle contentAdvertisement 4This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article contentThat extra layer of cynicism matters. It adds a deliciously fatalistic dimension to a format vulnerable to the fantasy that powers a lot of forgettable “secret agent” entertainment, namely that outcomes can be changed by a combination of quick thinking and violence. That element isn’t entirely absent from “Slow Horses,” of course. The last two episodes of this new season rely on this fetishization of contingency more than they satirize it, in fact – to their detriment. (There is more action in this season of “Slow Horses” than in all the others combined.)But “Slow Horses” is strongest when it’s thinking in chess metaphors. You can come up with a surprise or two, certainly, but you’re highly constrained by all that’s gone before. Your moves will be mostly predictable, and so will your team’s, because everyone knows roughly how knights and rooks move. The rules of engagement are set, and if you’re any good at the game, you’ll see exactly how it’s all going to shake out long before it does.Advertisement 5This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article content Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses,” now streaming on Apple TV+. Photo by Apple TV+Militating against this largely deterministic backdrop is the adrenaline for which thrillers are famous. Some of that split-second decision-making this season comes from Dander, but most of it comes from Cartwright, the character who (if this were a less original show) would be the maverick. The cool guy. The sexy, rule-breaking protagonist. He’d be confident, and he’d be right.In “Slow Horses,” Cartwright is wrong. A lot. For the consumer of thrills, this turns out to be oddly thrilling! We’re not used to the hero messing up badly, and it’s mildly destabilizing that so many of these agents, even the “good” ones, fail as much, and as spectacularly, as they do. That’s no more a condemnation of their merit than their placement at Slough House was: Cartwright is obviously talented. Many of his instincts are sound. He’s good-looking, resourceful and brave. Not to mention MI5 royalty: His grandfather (played by Jonathan Pryce) is a retired officer. But he’s also incredibly easy to bait, partly because he’s so eager to prove himself, so sure he should be the protagonist.Advertisement 6This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article contentAnd indeed, in the first season, he sort of was. “Slow Horses” has since course-corrected, pulling focus from the guy with the leading-man looks. It was the right call. He would have been a bland hero. His adrenaline and idealism, on the other hand – as foils to Lamb’s pessimism and lethargy – make it possible for the show to run parallel plots at bizarrely different paces.Recommended from Editorial Gary Oldman says he’ll be ready to retire when spy series ‘Slow Horses’ ends: ‘I’ve had a blessed time’ Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden dish on Apple’s misfit spy thriller ‘Slow Horses’ This two-speed trick is part of what makes “Slow Horses” feel new, even though it’s an obvious remix of familiar genres: Cartwright, whose impulsivity keeps landing him in hot water, is almost always running, whereas Lamb, who’s usually several steps ahead of him, barely moves. It’s a very funny setup, even if plot mechanics sometimes sag under the strain. (There are moments this season when Cartwright is seconds away from certain death while a leisurely Lamb storyline develops – with apparent simultaneity – over several minutes.)Advertisement 7This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.Article contentThe contrast between the two does deeper work, too, of course. Cartwright’s idealism goes a…
Gary Oldman’s ‘Slow Horses’ goes fast and hard in its third season
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