Slow Horses' season 2 premiere plays the old hits—and that's just fine

Fire up those emails to HR, because the best toxic workplace on TV is back. Slow Horses galloped out the gates earlier this year to become something of a hit for Apple TV+, showing us that spies, they’re just like us! And even issuing an authoritative reminder that Mick Jagger is still cool.

After all that double-crossing, last-minute intrigue, and bombshell twist ending last season, there were a lot of ways season two could begin, my least favorite option being the Slough House family going dark and doing their thing on the run. Luckily, this show is more clever than me and knows Jackson Lamb’s (Gary Oldman) tumbledown domain is the heart and soul of the series. So instead, things have reset as much as possible at the beginning. Yes, Sid is still missing (presumed dead), and Diana (Kristin Thomas Scott) isn’t one to take defeat lying down, but the premiere does a nice job of keeping things tied to the core group while we find our bearings.

GRADE FOR SEASON 2, EPISODE 2, “FROM UPSHOTT WITH LOVE”: B

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Before that, though, there’s a cryptic cold open to contend with (wouldn’t be a spy show without one!) In short: A man races through the streets of London to catch someone he thinks once tortured him, years ago. He gets on a rail replacement bus, sits down, sends a text, and promptly dies. As someone who grew up in the peripheries of London, it’s comforting and funny to see grown-up spy business being handled in the semi-suburban rail stations I know so well.

So what’s become of our Slough House team? Roddy’s still in charge of the screens—pretty much the only spy-tech element Slough House has to offer, but they’re fuming at having to share their office with newcomer Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards, who I’ve been told most of you will know from Peaky Blinders but who I know as “Sketch” from Skins. Shirley’s a bit of a show-off, in that she’s a genuinely good spy. “I haven’t decided if she’s just half-shit or full-shit like the rest of you,” Jackson tells the team in an act of effusive endorsement.

River’s all but checked out, interviewing for jobs at private intelligence firms but not really getting anywhere. It seems all any of the recruiters are interested in are Jackson Lamb anecdotes (Can you blame them?). Louisa and Min, ever together, are approached by Webb to do some light-level work for him at the Park. It’s not a reset as such, but there’s definitely a “first day of school” vibe in the opening two episodes, which makes for an easy reentry to the show (or, simply, an entry if you can’t be bothered to watch season one).

After the opening exchanges, Jackson himself makes a field trip to see where this former agent died. I love seeing Oldman as Jackson Lamb going into undercover spy mode. He adopts the part of a grieving brother, asking the driver with all the sincerity of the world if he can “say goodbye” with a tearful wobble in his voice. He nicks the phone and, as soon as he’s out of earshot, lets out a nice, Lamb-esque “Fuck!” CICADA, the text reads. We find out the deceased is Richard “Dickie” Bough, a former agent. And that CICADA references sleeper agents embedded in British society (much how cicadas spend years underground before emerging all at once). Firmer details are thin on the ground, but when River brings it up to his Grandfather, there’s once again the feeling the elder Cartwright is keeping a secret or two to himself.

There’s a sense of a looser thread in the opening two episodes, with River, Jackson, and Louisa/Min all on their own individual (but tangentially related) missions. Whatever Cicada’s about, River’s only getting the bare minimum from Lamb, which makes their, er, lively exchanges even spicier. For all the good spy thriller elements last season, I found Slow Horses to be at its best when it looked to a more “acerbic workplace black comedy” vibe. Chalk that up to de facto showrunner Will Smith (the other one) cutting his teeth writing for The Thick of It and, later, Veep, both of which belong in the pantheon of the “people standing around in an office openly insulting each other” genre. I’m already more drawn into the cicada mystery than I was to the perfunctory “find the laptop!” thrust of the show’s debut run. That’s to say: Welcome back, Slow Horses.

Stray observations

• Even when River is able to get one over on Jackson, the elder statesman always finds a way to bulldoze himself back to the top of the pecking order. See: the outcome of their £50 bet.
• It’s almost laughable to pretend there’s any suspense about where Sid is or when she’ll come back. It’s Olivia Cooke! She’s busy making a mess of Westeros in House Of The Dragon! She’ll show up when she shows up.
• “Shady Russian Oligarchs” is a trope I feel has run its course. Does anyone else have any standards they’d like to see retired when it comes to spy thrillers?
• This section could (and will) easily devolve into a list of Jackson Lamb quotes so I’ll leave you with this gentler one I very much enjoyed when Min tells him he’s been seconded to work for Webb: “If it was anyone else, I’d go nuclear bananas, but I hate Webb and you will doubtless fuck it up, so I consider this a result.”