Slow Horses seasons 1-3 recap

Television was once looked down upon by big movie stars as something that was beneath them, but times have changed. Major Hollywood players now regularly star in shows such as True Detective, Big Little Lies, and Mare of Easttown, getting to flex their chops in long-form TV shows rather than one-off movies .

One such actor is Gary Oldman, who has such an impressive range that he’s able to play such diverse characters as Sirius Black in Harry Potter , a psychotic cop in Leon, Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, and James Gordon in The Dark Knight.

In Slow Horses, an Apple TV original spy drama, Oldman once again plays a completely different character, this time as Jackson Lamb, a disillusioned, disheveled, and frankly disgusting MI5 agent who runs a department where all the useless agents are sent to rot.

The show is based on the Slough House novels by Mick Herron, and it’s truly excellent. Season 4 of Slow Horses is due to begin on September 4. If you don’t have time to binge-watch all the episodes before then, or you simply can’t remember what happened ahead of the new season, here’s a recap of all three seasons of Slow Horses so far.

Slow Horses season 1 recap

Introducing the Slow Horses and their new recruit

The job of the first season of any show is to introduce us to the main characters, and Slow Horses does that with a bang. The opening scene sees MI5 agent River Cartwright (Jack Lowden, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power ) bungling a security operation at an airport, leading to the detonation of a bomb that kills hundreds of people.

Thankfully, it turns out that the operation was a training exercise, and the only thing that’s dead is River Cartwright’s career at MI5. Cartwright finds himself banished to Slough House, a department of MI5 where disgraced agents (known as slow horses) are sent to perform menial tasks under the watch of Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), a man who appears to care as little about personal hygiene as he does about the agents under his watch.

The story revolves around a terrorist plot in which a right-wing group announce that they intend to behead a Muslim student that they’ve kidnapped. Cartwright takes the lead in investigating the threat, and Lamb, who, despite his appearance and lowly position, is a highly capable operative, discovers that the plot is being orchestrated by Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas, The English Patient), Head of Operations at MI5.

Taverner tries to shift the blame onto Slough House, but Lamb is able to stop her attempts to frame him, while Cartwright proves that he’s a capable agent by hunting down the terrorists and saving the hostage.

Some other crucial plot points are revealed along the way. We discover that Cartwright is the grandson of David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce, The Crown ) who was a senior figure in MI5 before his retirement. We also learn that Lamb’s put-upon secretary, Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves, Luther) is an alcoholic who found her previous boss, Charles Partner, the former Head of MI5, dead in his bath from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot.

Lamb comes clean to Standish that he feels responsible for the death, as it was Lamb who gave Partner the gun that he used to kill himself. However, we soon discover that it was in fact Lamb who killed Partner and faked the suicide under the orders of River Cartwright’s grandfather, David.

Slow Horses season 2 recap

A new plot in which Russian sleeper agents awaken

Apple

Season 2 starts with the death of former MI5 agent Dickie Bow from an apparent heart attack. However, Lamb smells a rat, and finds a single word on Bow’s phone: Cicada. After some digging, Lamb discovers that cicada was a code word for Russian sleeper agents undercover in the UK. Lamb becomes convinced that these sleeper agents are being activated to carry out an act of terrorism.

Lamb meets with a former KGB operative called Katinsky, who is now living in the UK under MI5’s protection. Katinsky gives Lamb the name of the spy, Chernitsky, who was responsible for murdering Bow, and Cartwright tracks him to a sleepy village. Cartwright goes undercover in the village as a journalist and is taken under the wing of the local bartender who takes him for dinner at her parents’ home. A friend of the family arrives, who Cartwright immediately recognizes as being Chernitsky, the man he believes is responsible for Dickie Bow’s death.

Cartwright tracks Chernitsky to a small airfield, where it’s revealed that it’s actually the bartender’s mother who is the sleeper agent. She flies away in a plane that Cartwright believes is full of explosives, and which is headed for London where a large anti-capitalist protest is taking place, with the streets full of people, including senior MI5 figure, Diana Taverner. He makes the call to order an evacuation.

Meanwhile, other Slough House operatives are roped in as security for an important meeting with the Russians. They are working under James “Spider” Webb (Freddie Fox, White House Farm), a slimy MI5 agent who was responsible for Cartwright’s humiliation in the training operation at the start of season 1.

Cartwright discovers that the plane being flown to London is a decoy and does not contain any explosives. The plot was a diversion to allow the Russian man involved in the meeting to steal the diamonds of another Russian while the building was locked down under the evacuation order. Cartwright manages to cancel the evacuation before the plane is shot down.

Lamb discovers that Katinsky is actually responsible for the entire plot. The plan was to completely humiliate Lamb before killing him as revenge for the death of Partner, who was passing information to Katinsky in the KGB. Lamb deliberately fed Partner false information, which Katinsky passed on to his superiors, leading to Katinsky having to leave Russia and flee to England. With Katinsky’s plan failing, he comes to kill Lamb. Lamb gives him a gun with a single bullet and the choice of killing himself or Lamb. Katinsky chooses the former.

Slow Horses season 3 recap

A major character is taken hostage

Apple

The third season of Slow Horses begins with an MI5 agent in Istanbul trying to leak a file. When she passes on the file, instead of thanks, she gets thrown from the roof in a murder staged as a suicide. Her lover, Sean Donovan (Sope Dirisu, Gangs of London), another agent who has been charged with trying to stop her from leaking the document, finds her dead.

Fast-forward a year, and we’re back at Slough House. Standish, Lamb’s secretary and probably the closest thing he has to a friend, is taken hostage, and Cartwright is sent a photo of her with a gun to his head, with instructions to meet at a specific location.

When he arrives, he’s met by Spider Webb, who claims he too has been forced to attend the meeting to save his sister from being killed. Cartwright is told to break into MI5’s headquarters to retrieve a file. Cartwright is able to get to the room where the files are stored, but when he does so, and explains his predicament to the woman in charge of the files, she calls someone who she says can help. When Cartwright takes the phone, it’s Lamb, telling him to leave. Standish isn’t in danger; the whole thing is an operation by a “tiger team” from a private security firm that have secretly been hired by the Home Secretary to test the security of MI5.

However, despite the operation being a success, the people who have been hired to take Standish refuse to let her go and take one of the security firms’ own people hostage, too. They claim they will kill them both unless they are given access to the “gray books”, which are reports of MI5’s investigations into the truth behind major conspiracy theories.

The head of the security firm’s operation, who turns out to have been Spider Webb all along, is killed by the rogue team. Ingrid Tierney, head of MI5 (Sophie Okonedo, Death on the Nile) orders Cartwright to escort the hostage takers to a facility where the gray books are stored and give them what they want. However, she is aware that the man in charge of the rogue team is actually Sean Donovan. He is trying to find the file that his lover was killed for trying to leak, in order to find out why she died.

We discover that the whole plot was set into motion by Diana Taverner, who wants to expose Tierney for ordering the killing of one of her own operatives. Tierney ordered the hit because the file contains information about MI5’s illegal use of a hacking device that led to the deaths of several people. Taverner knows that if Tierney is exposed, she will finally get the top job at MI5.

In an effort to save her career, Tierney orders the killing of everyone who knows about the file, including Standish, Cartwright, and other Slow Horses who are helping Cartwright to get the file. After a long battle with the security firm’s team, the Slow Horses manage to escape with the incriminating file, although Donovan and most of his team are killed.

Cartwright goes to visit his grandfather, who is now in the early stages of dementia. His grandfather says that if the file were to go public it would damage MI5, and throws it into the fire, saying that he has done so to protect River. However, Cartwright has made a copy, and he leaks the file, leading to Taverner replacing Tierney as head of MI5.

In a final scene that is sure to have ramifications in season 4, Lamb finally tells Standish the truth about Partner, her old boss. Not only was he selling information to the Russians, but he was also leaving a trail to make it look as if it was Standish who was the mole. Standish refuses to believe Lamb and tells him that she is quitting.

Slow Horses season 4: What to expect

It seems like we’re in for a treat

Apple

Although Season 4 hasn’t dropped yet, if the critic’s scores are anything to go by, it’s going to be a real cracker. The fourth season currently has a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics who have been given early access to the show claiming that it continues with the same high-quality thrills as the first three seasons. Some critics even go as far as to say that season 4 may be the best yet.

A new character is introduced in the form of a mercenary played by Hugo Weaving (The Matrix ), alongside other new characters played by the likes of Ruth Bradley (Primeval) and James Callis (Battlestar Galactica). The Slow Horses are tasked with trying to stop a bomb plot, with the trailer indicating that one of the Slough House team isn’t going to make it out of season 4 alive.

Season 4 starts on September 4, with one episode released per week. The sixth and final episode of season 4 of Slow Horses is due to air on October 9.