Apple TV's 30-Episode Masterpiece Is The Best Espionage Series Of All Time

While there is a long history of small-screen spy shows, one unexpectedly brilliant Apple TV drama has quietly emerged as the genre’s greatest series in recent years. Spy shows have been around a lot longer than many readers might assume. Get Smart, Mission: Impossible, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E were all huge hits as far back as the ‘60s, providing evidence that the business of espionage has been a consistent interest for TV audiences for decades now.

In recent years, big-budget spy shows like Prime Video’s R-rated thriller The Terminal List and its spinoff Dark Wolf have reignited interest in the genre, with Netflix’s The Night Agent and the slyly comedic Mr. & Mrs. Smith reboot following the success of that 2022 show. Although Prime Video’s spy franchise Citadel proved an expensive misfire, Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount spy series Lioness proves that even the king of small-screen Westerns could not resist cashing in on the genre’s re-emergence.

However, none of these shows are quite able to measure up to the best spy drama of all time. Bizarrely, this series comes from Apple TV, even though the streaming service is now the first name in sci-fi TV thanks to Severance, Silo, Dark Matter, Foundation, and the upcoming William Gibson adaptation Neuromancer. Debuting in 2022, Slow Horses focuses on the eponymous setting of Slough House and the subpar spies who are exiled there after what would otherwise have been career-ending misdemeanors.

Slow Horses Finds The Perfect Balance Of Espionage & Drama

Based on the Slough House novel series by author Mick Herron, Slow Horses initially focuses its story on Jack Lowden’s rookie spy River Cartwright. Unceremoniously sent to Slough House after a public screwup, River is met there by Gary Oldman’s scene-stealing veteran Jackson Lamb. Rude, slovenly, and secretly a super-spy in disguise, Lamb is quick to assign River a string of menial and mundane missions that prove his days of high-stakes, high-drama espionage are well and truly over.

That is, until the emerging conspiracy plot of Slow Horses proves that the undervalued denizens of Slough House are secretly stuck with the task of keeping Britain from disaster behind the scenes. The polar opposite of high-octane thrillers like The Terminal List, Slow Horses subtly reveals the ways in which River and Jackson’s drudgery is a quietly vital part of foiling everything from terrorist plots to corruption within the Secret Service.

With a stacked supporting cast including Hugo Weaving, Kristin Scott Thomas, Olivia Cooke, Jonathan Pryce, Katherine Waterston, Sope Dirisu, and Sophie Okonedo, Slow Horses is a twisty, authentically unpredictable spy series that gets better with each season. It is tough for any show to maintain its quality consistently over a matter of years, but what makes this all the more impressive is the fact that Slow Horses also balances an overarching series-long arc with season-long plots.

Slow Horses' Consistent Quality Is Almost Unheard Of In The Streaming Age

While the show’s first outing set a high standard for subsequent seasons, season 2 got darker and more personal as the show delved further into River and Jackson’s working relationship. While many hit thriller shows like Reacher were busy jumping from one action sequence to the next, Slow Horses gripped viewers with a different breed of intrigue.

The show’s appropriately slow-moving storyline ratcheted up the tension bit by bit, creating a paranoid atmosphere that called to mind cynical ‘70s classics like Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, and The Conversation. Remarkably, Slow Horses maintained this level of quality consistently throughout its five seasons, an achievement that is almost unheard of in the age of streaming, when many promising shows go off the rails or end up prematurely canceled before they can fulfill their potential.

Release Date April 1, 2022

Network Apple TV+

Showrunner Douglas Urbanski

Directors Adam Randall, James Hawes, Jeremy Lovering, Saul Metzstein

Writers Mark Denton, Jonny Stockwood

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  Jack Lowden

  River Cartwright