Slow Horses drops a disappointingly fractured episode

I wrote last week that Slow Horses works best when it leans into its workplace-comedy trappings. This is illustrated, unfortunately, in “Drinking Games,” with the show struggling when the crew of Slough House are scattered to the wind. Jackson Lamb denigrating his coworkers just isn’t the same when it’s done over the phone, and the glacial pace of the Cicada storyline doesn’t pick up the slack by adding a whole lot of intrigue or excitement.

Still, this is broadly a Good TV Show, and the cold open packs a couple of punches in quick succession. Last week’s cliffhanger of Min tailing (and subsequently being nabbed by) the Russian security detail results in nothing but a friendly, drunken evening of vodka shots between he and the Russians. He toasts to “Pravda!” and laughs and brushes off their concern when he prepares to cycle home steaming drunk. Hell, one of them even puts on his helmet gently, giving him a little pat. But you can’t have the light without the dark in Slow Horses, and just before the opening credits roll, we find out Min died offscreen in a traffic collision moments later.

It’s a harsh, shocking move, and no one’s hit harder than Louisa, who has to grieve alone then tamp down her pain almost immediately to continue with the operation. “Aren’t you supposed to do denial first?” Jackson asks her when she forcefully demands to stay on the case. “What is it, denial, anger, drinking… More drinking?” The rest of Slough House keeps moving. River allows himself a moment of melancholy for his fallen colleague, but Roddy wins the award for the coldest reaction, simply remarking, “He was okay, for an average guy.”

Jackson, ever vigilant, has an ex-Dog look into Rebecca, the driver who struck Min, finding out that she just so happened to spend some of her troubled youth in Russia. This culminates in a very spy-movie moment when Rebecca comes home and finds Jackson already in her living room having made himself a cup of tea. Look, we all know Oldman’s brilliant and Jackson is a gift of a character, but watching him change gears so quickly through his casual interrogation of Rebecca—smarmy to threatening to reassuring and back to smarmy and so on—is great work by both the writers and actors here. Rebecca isn’t quite on the level of even Slough House’s operatives, and once Jackson finds a wad of cash in her purse, it’s game over. “I wasn’t driving,” she tells Jackson, “and it wasn’t the car that killed him.”

Elsewhere, River is on his covert mission in Upshott, a gorgeous little village in the Cotswolds. I’ve been to the Cotswolds and can vouch for the accuracy in its depiction here (stunningly beautiful, painfully boring). Almost immediately, Kelly, the local bartender, takes a shine to him. And what luck! Her father just so happens to be a big shot over at the flying club we know Chernitsky visited. Playing the part of a journalist covering “village life” (seriously, River, that’s all the effort you put into your undercover identity?), he has her show him around and even take him for a terrifying ride at the flying club. When he’s back on the ground, he notices his keys, wallet, and phone, are in an obviously different configuration in the locker he left them in, surmising that Douglas, the father, is either sloppy or wants River to know he’s got his eye on him.

Later at a Very English Barbecue at Kelly’s parents’ house (gin and tonics, cheese twists, presumably unseasoned burnt meat), we’re told of Leo, an old friend of Douglas’ and a hardcore leftie. “He’s one notch down from ‘hang the rich,’” Kelly says out the side of her mouth. There’s an unexpected knock at the door, and River gets a call that Chernitsky never actually got on a plane to Estonia, simply slipping his phone into the bag of a folk band at the airport. I think you can guess where this is going. “This is Leo!” Kelly’s mom happily announces, and out steps the towering Chernitsky. As a spy thriller, this is all very rote stuff. But an awkward dinner party in rural England with multiple cover identities and the overbearingly British custom of aggressive politeness? Sign me up.

Stray observations

• Diana can’t shake ol’ Peter Judd, who personally demands she ride in the car with him to his speech on the same day as the anti-capitalism protest. It’s no less than she deserves.
• Louise gets a new partner in Marcus to run security along with Min’s (probable) killers for Pashkin. Not much of anything happens here, except we find out Marcus gambles on the job, which is why he was sent to Slough House.
• I could watch an entire hour of Jackson Lamb being baffled by a laundromat. “Four quid?!” he practically shouts as he looks over the machines. “This is spycraft 101,” his ex-Dog contact incredulously replies.
• Catherine says she never heard of anyone called Chernitsky when she was at MI5 proper. Lamb, with all the finesse of a sledgehammer, replies, “Well, the Park has a file on him, so either—shock horror—you’re not the big cheese you were making out, or your mind’s starting to go. It’s probably a bit of both.”