Slow Horses season six arrives on Apple TV+ on 16 September, and the trailer it dropped ahead of that date has left a considerable mess behind it: one apparent resurrection, a shipping container set deliberately alight, and Jackson Lamb breaking into a senior intelligence officer’s back garden at some ungodly hour. Business as usual, then, except that almost nothing about what has been shown feels remotely usual.
The new season follows the sixth and seventh novels in Mick Herron’s series, with Gaby Chiappe adapting and Adam Randall directing, according to Variety. The full run is six episodes, dropping weekly on Wednesdays and wrapping on 21 October. If you have not yet finished season five, turn back now: what follows will spoil it comprehensively.
The Questions Slow Horses Season Six Needs to Answer
The trailer opens with Lamb (Gary Oldman) confronting Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) over the deaths of his agents. She offers coincidence. He is not persuaded. ‘Coincidence, yeah,’ he says. ‘But it’s pretty hard to lock yourself in a shipping container.’ The camera then finds a man and a woman setting that container alight. Who they are, and whether their campaign connects to right-wing politician Peter Judd (Samuel West), at whom Taverner directs one of her more precise glares across a restaurant table, is the season’s first knot to untangle.
Moira Tregorian (Joanna Scanlan) appears to be among those targeted, caught in what looks like a gas attack, and the trailer suggests the Slow Horses are being picked off in a coordinated way rather than through the usual bureaucratic negligence. Lamb’s question to Taverner (whether she has ‘pissed anyone off other than him recently’) is, under the circumstances, not entirely rhetorical.
Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar) stepped away from Slough House after a mental health break in season five, and the trailer finds the team turning up at her place of work. ‘I haven’t been in touch for months, I’m not actually needed,’ she tells them. Standish’s reply (‘No, I’m afraid you are’) is the kind of line that closes a door on civilian life rather abruptly. Her reunion with the group carries the additional weight of an awkward kiss shared with River before her departure, which the show will presumably not let lie.
River’s father Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving), who escaped accountability after blackmailing MI5 in season four, reappears to go nose-to-nose with his son. ‘What are you doing here?’ River asks. ‘Business,’ Frank replies, before the scene cuts to what appears to be Frank attempting to murder someone. Whether his return proves to be asset or liability for River is, at this stage, genuinely unclear.
Taverner, now occupying First Desk following Claude Whelan’s removal at the end of season five, faces a hearing where she is told: ‘No one is unaccountable, Diana. There are going to be consequences.’ That she has reached the position she has spent the entire series manoeuvring towards, only to find herself immediately on the back foot, has the ring of a very specific kind of dramatic irony the show has always enjoyed.
The Return of Sid, and What Lamb’s Scars Mean
The trailer’s most arresting moment is its last: Sidonie ‘Sid’ Baker (Olivia Cooke) at the top of a staircase, saying ‘Hello, River’ with the composure of someone who has not, technically, been dead. Sid was shot in the head in season one, declared dead by Taverner, and has been absent ever since. How she survived, and why Taverner confirmed her death, is the question the show has been holding in reserve for some time now.
One thread from season five that the show seems unlikely to leave unresolved: Lamb’s story about a handler whose feet were burnt off by the Stasi, told ostensibly to motivate River, ended with a shot of Lamb’s own scarred feet. The implication was unmistakable. Who the woman in that story was, and what more the season will reveal about Lamb’s past, gives Oldman material the show has been building towards carefully.
Joining the returning cast this season is Lenny Rush, a newcomer to the show who, according to Deadline, won a BAFTA for his work on the BBC’s Am I Being Unreasonable? Deadline also reports that a seventh season is already in the works, which suggests Apple TV+ has no intention of letting Slough House close its doors anytime soon. The first episode premieres 16 September; the finale lands 21 October.
