Slow Horses is back, and it is not having a good time. The show’s sixth season opener, “Circle Of Life,” opens with a funeral, a burning corpse, and a father who should not be back. It is a funereal premiere in every sense of the word.
The show, based on Mick Herron’s Slough House books, has a formula. River Cartwright gets humiliated. Diana Taverner freezes someone with an eyebrow. Jackson Lamb rips ass and connects the dots. Those are the constants. What changes is the tone, and this season’s opener sets a bleak one.
Loy Returns To Burn
The episode opens with a blast from the past. Paul Higgins’ Struan Loy comes back after four seasons away. He is the sort of man who is irritating and delusional, and he burns to death in the most horrific manner possible.
Someone is bumping off the worst spies in London. We see Andor’s Kyle Soller and The Witcher’s MyAnna Buring kill off former Slough House residents. The killings are immolation and drowning. The why is unknown, but the arrival of Loy’s death raises red flags. Taverner, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, refuses to let Lamb know about it when underling Emma Flyte brings it up.
The constant rain turns London into a funereal sludge of misery.”
David Cartwright’s Funeral
The marquee event is the death of David Cartwright, former MI5 head and River’s grandfather. Jonathan Pryce delivers one last typically affecting flashback between grandfather and grandson. Then the episode memorializes him as both hero and punchline.
River attempts to honor his grandfather’s dedication to the greater good at the funeral, forced to call him only the head of the U.K.’s Department Of Transport. Lamb cackles about all the “cars and buses…minibuses” that Cartwright The Elder saved.
The laughs drain back out for the episode’s big reveal: River’s father Frank has returned. Hugo Weaving’s Frank purrs threats, rolls his eyes, and kicks his son’s ass. Watching Weaving do that is a genuine pleasure, but it suggests the show is steering into sentimentality.
Slow Horses Abandons Its Spark
Frank’s return is the problem. Slow Horses has often treated continuity and character growth with contempt. Now it is dragging a supervillain dad back into the picture. That feels like a harbinger of more of that kind of thing to come.
It is not that I do not like River. Jack Lowden makes him just enough of a whiny asshole to deserve his treatment as Britain’s Most Consistently Incorrect Man. But I get nervous when the show starts to steer into his delusions of main character-hood.
The Building Is Abandoned
The constant rain turns London into a funereal sludge of misery. Slough House itself takes on the spectre of an abandoned building on the verge of condemnation. Someone is sending estate agents over to sell the building, while the Slow Horses have all been booted from MI5’s payroll. Lamb declares he is on “strike.”
Our supporting characters are mostly in static positions. Coe remains a quiet but effective psychopath. Ho struggles to bring his usual splashes of goofball color to these dismal proceedings. Shirley now exudes a slightly less coke-addled version of impatient kid energy.
Saskia Reeves’ Catherine gets hit with another indicator that Slow Horses’ sixth season is finally ditching its usual rhythms.
The Rain Sets The Tone
The episode opens on a shot of roadkill getting mashed into the blacktop. The constant rain is the visual of stasis turning into decay. Slow Horses has always been a show about stagnation, but this season looks like it wants to push that metaphor further.
The show’s sixth season is promising to be a pretty River-heavy one. That means Lamb and River will dominate the narrative. The supporting cast will be sidelined.
What We Make Of It
The premiere is a strong start. It is grim, funny, and full of the show’s trademark cynicism. But the return of Frank is a warning sign. The show that made a virtue of its unsentimental spark is showing signs of drifting toward sentimentality.
The tone is set for a bleak season. The show has always been funereal, but this season seems determined to make the funereal permanent.
It is Bummer Season for Slow Horses, and the premiere proves it. The show has weathered five seasons of its own grim humor, but the return of River’s father suggests the storm may be getting stronger.
See the video the story is built around at The A.V. Club.
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