Slow Horses returns for a high-octane fifth series on Apple TV+ with surprise Roddy Ho romance

Slow Horses returns for a much-anticipated fifth series on Apple TV+, opening with a jolt: in a suburban shopping centre, a young man with blank eyes opens fire. His first victim is a charismatic campaigner for the London mayor, and after the carnage the killer surveys the scene before being cut down by a mysterious assassin who escapes in a white van. The sequence sets the tone for a season that wastes no time throwing Slough House back into the line of fire. The biggest twist, however, is not the mayhem but a personal one: Roddy Ho, the tech-obsessed MI5 operator, has found himself a girlfriend.

That development lands against the show’s usual backdrop of secrecy and double lives. The woman in Roddy’s life looks to be a supermodel, a detail that immediately signals a potential honey trap. Her appearance contrasts with Roddy’s self-regard and his colleagues’ calculation that love and loyalty rarely mix cleanly with intelligence work. As the team tries to figure out whether Roddy’s date is real or another trap, Shirley, who is emotionally volatile and not beyond self-medication, suspects that Roddy’s near miss from a speeding white van was not an accident but an attempted murder. Most of Slough House’s occupants are slow to realize it, but viewers recognize the getaway vehicle, a white van, as the killer’s escape route.

Slow Horses has long been described as dark comedy, though its humor tends to be black and situational rather than jokey. The drama leans on the absurdities of espionage life, the friction in the Slough House offices, and the awkward social dance performed by its agents. In the fifth series, River Cartwright and his colleagues, including Louisa, grapple with heartbreak and professional tension in scenes that mix banter with danger. Louisa reveals she is leaving Slough House for good, not just taking a break, a development that alters the ensemble dynamics a little more. Cartwright’s attempts at a valiant, or at least polite, farewell are undermined by his characteristic clumsiness.

Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb remains the franchise’s volatile heartbeat, appearing briefly to issue caustic commands as the staff navigates the new season’s crisis. The tone mixes hard-edged action with the familiar, dry wit that has defined the series. In its fifth outing, Slow Horses contends with a world where threats arrive quickly, and loyalties are tested under the pressure of a new wave of attacks and a romance that could complicate the unit’s operations.

Overall, the season promises the same blend of high-stakes espionage and character-driven drama that has made Slow Horses a standout in Apple TV+’s lineup. The opening sequence and Roddy Ho’s romance set the stage for a plot driven by both external danger and internal tensions, with the Slough House crew forced to balance friendship, ambition, and the ever-present threat to their livelihoods. Viewers can expect a tightly wound arc that merges suspense with sharp, sometimes caustic, humor, as the series continues to redefine what a spy drama can be.