Conspiracy looms in first look at spy thriller Slow Horses season 3

Jackson Lamb and his team of misfit MI5 agents return soon for season three of espionage thriller Slow Horses. Apple TV+ offered a first look Wednesday with some photos and plot tidbits about the trouble they will get into.

The award-winning show debuts December 1 with the first two episodes of the new season. As a big fan of the show and the books it’s based on, I can’t wait.

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Slow Horses season 3 promises intrigue and conspiracy

Like the previous two seasons (and Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, upon which the show is based), Slow Horses season three promises plenty of dark humor mixed with real intrigue. It’s one of our TV critic’s picks for best shows on Apple TV+.

Academy Award-winner Gary Oldman plays dissipated, hard-drinking misanthrope Lamb. He heads Slough House, the dumpster-on-fire section of Britain’s MI5 security agency. That’s where screwups are sent to languish before they eventually give up and quit. And yet Slough House’s slow horses keep getting in on the respectable spies’ action somehow.

Based on Mick Herron’s novel Real Tigers

Season three is adapted from Herron’s Real Tigers, the third novel in the CWA Gold Dagger Award-winning series. The season’s six episodes come out on Apple TV+ December 1 with two, then one each Friday through December 29.

Here’s Apple’s description of the series and season three:

Winner of Best English-Language Drama Series at the 2022 C21 International Drama Awards, Slow Horses is a darkly humorous espionage drama that follows a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in a dumping-ground department of MI5 known un-affectionately as Slough House. In season three, a romantic liaison in Istanbul threatens to expose a buried MI5 secret in London. When Jackson Lamb and his team of misfits are dragged into the fight, they find themselves caught in a conspiracy that threatens the future not just of Slough House but of MI5 itself.

And the rest of the cast is nothing to sneeze at:

The ensemble cast also includes Academy Award nominee Kristin Scott Thomas, BAFTA Scotland Award winner Jack Lowden, Saskia Reeves, Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung, Freddie Fox, Chris Reilly, Samuel West, Sophie Okonedo, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Kadiff Kirwan and Academy Award nominee Jonathan Pryce. Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù joins the season three cast as Sean Donovan, the former head of security at the British embassy in Istanbul, along with Katherine Waterston who plays Alison Dunn, an MI5 agent who uncovers a dark secret at the heart of the agency.

Awards and nominations for Slow Horses

• BAFTA Television Award nominations: Oldman’s first for Best Lead Actor, and co-star Jack Lowden for Best Supporting Actor.
• Other BAFTA nominations: Best Editing: Fiction (Katie Weiland); Best Original Music: Fiction (Daniel Pemberton and Mick Jagger); and, Best Sound: Fiction (Martin Jensen, Joe Beal, Duncan Price, Craig Butters, Sarah Elias and Andrew Sissons).
• 2022 C21 International Drama Awards: Best English-Language Drama Series

Watch seasons 1 and 2 on Apple TV+

If you haven’t watched Slow Horses, I envy your upcoming binge-watching project. You can catch up with season one and season two on Apple TV+ right now. And you can bone up on some of the show’s spy lingo, too.

And guess what? Slow Horses season four is a sure thing. It comes from Herron’s fourth novel in the series, Spook Street.

Slow Horses is produced for Apple TV+ by See-Saw Films produces the show, adapted for TV by Will Smith (Veep). Jamie Laurenson, Hakan Kousetta, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Douglas Urbanski, Gail Mutrux, Will Smith, Jane Robertson and Graham Yost serve as executive producers. Saul Metzstein directed season three.

Subscribe to Apple TV+

Apple TV+ is available by subscription for $6.99 with a seven-day free trial. You can also get it via any tier of the Apple One subscription bundle. For a limited time, customers who purchase and activate a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac or iPod touch can enjoy three months of Apple TV+ for free.

After first airing in November 2019, “Apple TV+ became the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world, and has premiered more original hits and received more award recognitions faster than any other streaming service. To date, Apple Original films, documentaries and series have been honored with 299 wins and 1,451 award nominations and counting,” the service said.

Those include multi-Emmy Award-winning comedy Ted Lasso and historic Oscar Best Picture winner CODA.

Source: Apple TV+