#slow horses s1

[lovetgr76]

The show is back on track with the arrival of Season 4, which currently has a 100% rating on the review aggregator. Thanks to these ratings, plus a first season with a total of 95%, the overall total for the show is an enormous 98%, making it one of the highest-rated shows on Rotten Tomatoes today.

[donotnomi]

🐎 OVERANALYZING SLOW HORSES #001 🐎

In the Season 1 finale of Slow Horses, Diana Taverner hands Lamb a resignation letter dated 20.02.16, marking the show's start in 2016.

But let's address the somewhat unrealistic timeline in the book canon. It's reminiscent of the 007 franchise—time passes, yet River is perpetually almost 30, Standish and Lamb are no closer to retirement.

It's intriguing to ponder how the show will navigate this temporal quirk. 🤔

[tenderhooked]

i am now so fully invested in river and lamb’s awkward slow burn journey to being father and son it’s concerning… i just. clenches fist. i love mentor/mentee dynamics that blur the line into You’re My Dad Now, Actually.

[lovetgr76]

Robert Frost on Editing for the Espionage Dramedy 'Slow Horses' | No Film School

[hr-twink]

[lovetgr76]

Standish:

SLOW HORSES (2022 — ) 🐴✨

Diana Taverner being obsessed with Jackson Lamb's obsession.

[nickcassldy]

.

[slowhorsesarchive]

[cowtiekentos]

Anyone with me tonight is fireproof. And you are in my debt until you're in a care home. SLOW HORSES S1 | EP 3

[generalpenguinangel]

Thoughts inspired by @saulbetter's recent posts.

This show is kind of sold or discussed as "spies! but they suck at being spies!" But the thing that all the slow horses actually have in common isn't that they're bad spies, it's that they're people without social capital. They actually range from competent to excellent at the technical aspects of their work (Ho, Catherine, Marcus, Shirley, Coe, and even River are all good at the hard skills of their jobs. We are told Louisa screwed up but in both show and books she is shown to be one of the most reliable performers on the team). But they don't have friends or patrons to protect them when things go sideways.

The reason they're the rejects is because they're loners who struggle to connect with other people for all their various reasons (childhood trauma, job-related PTSD, addiction, personality disorder, inherent temperament). So they're playing checkers when their internal opponents at Regent's Park are playing chess. To the extent that they even realize that the social/political game exists (Ho and Catherine mostly don’t), they're bad at it (Coe, Lech) and/or think they shouldn't have to play it (Marcus, Shirley). River impressively manages to be deficient in all three aspects: totally naive to the politics of advancement within the Park, bad with people, and so committed to his own view of himself as a Boy Scout that he thinks he shouldn't have to sully his hands with any of it.

This is why the show is such a brilliant office drama. This one is for all the folks who are good on paper but bomb in interviews, for all the people who are promoted based on their technical mastery and then shit the bed as managers because they're illiterate at reading people. This is why it's such a stroke of genius that River's ascendant career is cut off at the knees by tailing Taverner. He's so full of himself and such a try hard that he mistakenly thinks doing an unrequested extra credit assignment about his boss makes him clever instead of creepy, annoying, and red flagged as a potential troublemaker.

Unfortunately, because Mick Herron is unable to let the story or the characters grow, this excellent premise results in some deep weirdness later in the book series. (Weirder than the deadbeat dad child soldier sex cult plotline, you say? Idk, you be the judge.)

Book spoilers under the cut.

First, let’s talk about Lech Wicinski. (I know, no one wants to talk about Lech Wicinski, but he is the curly-haired insomniac introvert of my heart so I’m going to talk about him.) I love Lech but parts of his origin story are so stupid. He’s just a normal guy who is comfortable in his niche and relatively unambitious and gets screwed by ambitious people’s big ego shenanigans, which he falls into by accident when he unthinkingly steps outside his work comfort zone for a minute. So far, so good. But then, while he’s desperately trying to save his job and reputation, he’s also… not? Like, why would this sort of overly serious but otherwise very normal young-ish middle class man immediately and inexplicably decide not to seek medical treatment for a profoundly disfiguring injury? Why does he never even actually try to show to his fiancee that the revelation that causes the breakdown of their relationship was completely fictitious? It makes no sense! Except, the author is lazily destroying Lech’s social capital to make it make sense that he’s now a slow horse for life. 

Similarly, River can’t have Sid in S1 because she is a bright and well-rounded person while he is cute but also an idiot nepo baby manchild. So do the books resolve this imbalance by allowing River to grow - or even just change - in response to various challenges like dashed career aspirations, finally meeting his psychopath biodad, the steep mental decline of his beloved father figure, etc? No. Instead of letting River at least attempt to grow up, the books put River and Sid on a level by cutting Sid down instead - putting her in protection (ie. cutting all her social ties) and giving her a traumatic brain injury that hollows out her previously bright personality. Heaven knows we’re all miserable now. Sure do hope they fix that plotline for the show! I love them as endgame and I honestly think the show could do something so satisfying and poignant with them finally finding their missed connection but the books make the way they finally get together so creepy and sad.

[luxe-pauvre]

OCTOBER 2024

Read:

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

your fave is selling a pedophilic fantasy*

brat red, brat blue, brat me, brat you

How to win a Nobel prize

Watched:

Brat Summer, Indie Sleaze & The Death of the Clean Girl

The Terror (S1)

Slow Horses (S4)

Woman of the Hour

Pain Hustlers

She Said**

Listened To:

The usual comfort albums

Went To:

Too many medical appointments

Awful panel sessions about management consulting

[lovetgr76]

Jackson Lamb and / or Catherine Standish caught smiling...

[lovetgr76]

I am HERE for it!!! (we see you Lamb... we KNOW you CARE!!!!)

Jackson in s1e1 when he looks out the window as Catherine goes to work

[donotnomi]

SBIFF Cinema Society Q&A - Slow Horses with Gary Oldman and Douglas Urbanski recap

A recap of the juiciest tidbits from the panel featuring Gary Oldman and Douglas Urbanski:

About season 6

Season 6 is currently in pre-production, with most episodes already written.

Adam Randall, the director for Season 4, will helm the entire sixth season.

Production has allowed Randall to contribute to the writing process by joining the writers in the writing room.

Gary Oldman has already read the scripts and finds them fantastic.

About season 5

Season 5 will unveil a significant revelation about Lamb's past.

Viewers will catch a glimpse of Lamb's house.

Gary Oldman describes this season as truly impressive and with a more Le Carré-esque feel, akin to season 2.

Expect an intense exchange where Lamb blackmails Diana.

New, incredible insults directed at River are on the horizon.

Season 5 is a 'three farts season,' says Oldman, laughing his ass off.

About Mick Herron

Gary Oldman asked Mick Herron for extra information about Lamb when working on S1 but quickly realized that the character is a mystery even for his creator. Herron's response is often "I don't know".

Mick Herron asked Gary Oldman to accompany him to a signing session just before the release of the first season, not realizing that the show would eventually relieve him of his signing session obligations for good.

It was actually Mick Herron who suggested using David Cornwell, John Le Carré's real name, as the name on Lamb's passport that briefly appears in S1. And Kristen Scott Thomas's casting as Diana Taverner was inspired by her previous work with Gary Oldman on the set of The Darkest Hour.

Behind the scene

Will Smith is frequently on set, going over scripts with the actors.

Occasionally, there's room for improvisation.

With a single director overseeing the entire season, the Slow Horses team remains committed to their vision for nearly a year of continuous work on set.

Gary Oldman receives the scripts really early for every season.

Fart acting are obviously "sound effects".

There are emails going back and forth between Oldman and production about 'fart acting.' The one in the car in S3 was praised as 'robust.' There were emails about 'the frequency' of the sound because the car has leather seats, being a Rolls Royce.

The trench coat remains the same, unchanged since the very first season. No one is allowed to wash it.

Kristen Scott Thomas's casting as Diana Taverner was inspired by her previous work with Gary Oldman on the set of The Darkest Hour.

Almost all the crew come back year after year.

Gary Oldman compares working with the cast of Slow Horses to the joy of winning his Oscar.

[louisaguy]

ouuughhh auuuugh hmm may i hear more about wing's AU idea?? owo

HIIII SID

(from this ask game)

so this is an idea i stole from wing lmao shoutout again @readwing and it's an AU where like. frank approaches diana about getting his hands on river back in pre-s1 days, and so instead of being sent to slough house to get rid of him, she sends him off to frank at les arbres instead.

river thinks he's an agent going undercover to collect info about les arbres so he dutifully sends back his reports, but as time goes on and he gets no communication or response (even as his position at les arbres Deteriorates and his reports become less about reporting info and more about begging to be pulled out) it becomes inevitably clear that nobody is reading his letters. he is an agent in the field who has been forgotten mid-op and no one is going to come pull him out, no matter how bad things get. but river being river keeps believing that someone might be reading them, that his mission is still of vital importance and he needs to keep sending back his reports, pretending that they're not just being sent off into a void.

so then smash cut to slough house, digging through a bunch of dusty old boxes of documents a la s3, and they come across a box filled with coded reports of some ongoing mission. and these are only from a few months ago?? that's strange. they're in the form of coded letters. slowly they decipher them and start to realize Oh Fuck. some agent has been abandoned out there. these have been sitting in a basement collecting dust for Months when the contents are basically Help Me Please Help Me This Is Going Very Very Bad.

anyway. so then slough house deicides to make it their little mission to find out who this poor abandoned agent is and go fucking help him. and so that's basically what they do!

wing said they weren't gonna write it and it was up for grabs so i took a bit of a crack at it. the only part i got around to actually writing was a scene in which shirley and louisa ("Boxcutter" since she's armed with a boxcutter, shirley's got a baseball bat) break into spider's posh little flat in the middle of the night to threaten him into giving them info about who the man in the letters is, since the last letter told them to track down someone named Spider. now keep in mind in this AU spider never betrayed river, so their relationship isn't nearly as hostile, and also spider still goes by "james" since river wasn't around to make the spider nickname stick out of spite. anyway:

James smiles politely. “Now, ladies--” Boxcutter tugs his hair again-- “Ow! Okay, okay, sorry. I just-- even if I did know anything about what you’re talking about, which I don’t, why on Earth would I risk my career and share it with a bunch of vandals who don’t even have level one security clearance?” “We do have level one clearance,” Boxcutter says. “How else do you think we got the files?” “You--” He gapes at them. “You’re agents?” They glance at each other, eyes wide, as if they’ve just made a mistake. James puts it all together quite quickly-- They’re agents, but they talk about the Park like outsiders. They’re armed with everyday objects. They’re good enough to get into his Penthouse without tripping the alarm, but not good enough to avoid giving away their identities by accident. “You’re Slow Horses,” he concludes. He remembers hearing about Shirley now. Dander. The one who punched Wilson. He would rather like to avoid ending up on the wrong side of her baseball bat. The two women seem caught off guard about his accusation of their identity, and they wince at each other, Boxcutter’s-- Lousia, if he remembers correctly from water cooler gossip-- Louisa’s fingers loosening just slightly in their grip on his hair. He seizes the opportunity while he can, wrenching away from her grip and diving for the cell phone on the ground. On his knees, he scrambles to open the phone. Shirley raises her bat, but Louisa holds a hand out-- “No! We still need information out of him.” “He’s about to call the fucking cops!” “That gives us a few minutes to keep asking--” “He’s not going to fucking give us anything unless we show him what will happen if he doesn’t--” Louisa turns to James abruptly. “He asked for you,” she says, and there’s a strange quality to her voice that almost sounds like begging. “The agent in the letter. It felt like he knew you. He asked for you by name-- by-- by your nickname. He asked for you, Spider.” Spider stops, his thumb hovering over the call button. No one’s called him that in nearly two years. He’s gone by James ever since his graduation. In fact, the last person who’s called him "Spider" to date was… Instructed us to find you, ask about a man in Kent. I don’t know anyone in Kent. But he used to. Louisa’s features soften, ever so slightly. “You do know,” she says, eyes darting around his face, spotting the recognition in his eyes. “You know who he is.”

thank u for the ask friend!!!

[lovetgr76]

👏👏👏Wow!!😍❤️🔥