Slow Horses season 5 review: high-stakes espionage, sharper edges and a cheeky romance

Apple TV+'s Slow Horses returns for its fifth series, delivering brisk, action-packed espionage and a surprising romantic thread. From the opening moments, the season dives into a jarring scene: a young man with blank eyes opens fire in a suburban shopping centre, his first victim a campaigning figure for the London mayor. The shooter is then cut down in a messy exchange by a mysterious assassin who escapes in a white van. The sequence establishes a high gear and a sense that danger isn’t far from Slough House.

The premiere also pivots on an unexpected personal turn for Roddy Ho, the tech‑savvy but socially awkward member of the unit. After years of being a parody of cool detachment, Roddy finds himself with a girlfriend, a development described in early chatter as a jaw‑dropping twist for viewers who know the character. The woman appears as a striking, model‑like presence, prompting questions about whether she is a genuine connection or a honey trap of the kind espionage units are built to fear. Roddy’s colleagues are skeptical, and the tension inside Slough House grows as the implication of the romance ripples through the group.

Shirley, portrayed as cocaine-snorting and emotionally volatile, becomes the unit’s first responder to Roddy’s peril. She senses an imminent threat behind the near‑miss, insisting that Roddy’s brush with the white van was more than a random accident and that someone may have tried to kill him. Yet most of Slough House’s male colleagues discount the theory, and the viewer is left tracking a trail that some in the unit refuse to acknowledge. The departure of the audience’s expectations is essential to the show’s appeal: Slow Horses remains whip‑smart about the absurdities and fragilities of intelligence work, even when danger is front and center. The show’s tone is often described as dark comedy, though it leans more toward mood and misdirection than punchlines, with humor arising from workplace banter and the ridiculousness of the environment rather than stand‑up setups.

In the premiere’s follow‑up scenes, River Cartwright and his colleague Louisa share a quiet, if awkward, heart‑to‑heart that hints at emotional fragility beneath the unit’s hard-edged exterior. Cartwright’s awkwardness is a throughline of the series—he’s portrayed as emotionally inept in many social moments, a counterpoint to the more efficient, if equally flawed, women around him. Louisa, meanwhile, has announced she is leaving Slough House for good, a move that adds a layer of personal stakes to the office politics and the ever‑present sense that every departure reshapes the team’s dynamic. The dynamic between Cartwright and Louisa offers a muted, human counterpoint to the season’s larger threats and plot twists, underscoring the ensemble’s strengths and weaknesses in equal measure.

As the episode unfolds, the familiar faces return in cameo‑style bursts: Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb appears briefly to deliver his trademark sharp tongue and blunt temper, reminding viewers that Slough House operates on a different rhythm from the more polished corners of the espionage world. Kristin Scott Thomas also features in the broader arc as Diana Taverner, a figure whose influence and authority hover over the season’s events. The balance of returning stalwarts with new, volatile pressures keeps the show rooted in its trademark tone while inviting fresh story threads to mature over the fifth outing.

Critics and fans alike have noted that Slow Horses’ fifth series leans into its established sensibilities: it’s dark, it’s wry, and it isn’t afraid to let its characters stumble through complications that expose both their strengths and flaws. The show’s strength remains its ability to fuse suspense with caustic social commentary—especially in the way it treats intelligence work as a workplace farce at times, where egos, rivalries, and miscommunications threaten to derail serious mission work. The opening hours set a brisk pace, but they also seed moral and ethical questions about loyalty, risk, and the toll of covert operations on the people who carry them out.

Overall, the fifth series reaffirms Slow Horses’ identity: it is a spy drama that doesn’t glamorize its world, instead highlighting the human costs behind the covert operations and the awkward humor that survives even in the bleakest moments. Normal service at Slough House—sharp wit, flawed heroes, and a willingness to push boundaries—appears to be resumed, even as the season promises new personal entanglements, sharper power dynamics, and the ever-present threat of an unseen hand guiding events from the shadows.