Season 4 of Slow Horses stayed at the top of a rating’s company’s popularity chart for the second week. This darkly funny espionage drama starring Gary Oldman follows a team of British intelligence agents who’ve all made career-ending mistakes yet are somehow always in the center of the action. New episodes stream each Wednesday on Apple TV+.
Plus, Apple’s crime comedy Bad Monkey starring Vince Vaughn held onto popularity, too.
Slow Horses season 4 continues spy thriller’s streaming success
The Cold War made spy-vs-spy novels into a popular genre. The demise of the Soviet Union didn’t make these thrillers any less exciting, especially when they’re as well written as the books in Mick Herron’s series “Slough House.” Apple TV+ adapted these into a long-running show that’s won both awards and a devoted audience.
Slow Horses season 4 comes straight from Spook Street, the fourth novel in the Herron series Each season has more or less brilliantly adapted one of Herron’s books. And Apple TV+ already green-lit a fifth season, set to be adapted from the fifth novel, London Rules.
The new season premiered early this month, and the analysts at JustWatch put the show at No. 1 on its listing of Top 10 TV shows on streaming from September 9 through Sept. 15, then it continued at the top for another week: from Sept. 16 through Sept. 22. It sits at No. 6 on rival rating company Reelgood’s list of Top 10 TV shows on streaming for Sept. 19 through Sept. 25.
Charts: JustWatch/Reelgood
Estimates from companies JustWatch and Reelgood are necessary because streaming services rarely reveal how many people tune in to their offerings.
If this popularity gets you interested, the Apple TV+ season 4 summary says:
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. Season four opens with a bombing that detonates personal secrets, rocking the already unstable foundations of Slough House.
The Emmy-nominated series stars Gary Oldman as MI5’s irascible Slough House section chief Jackson Lamb. Some makeup artist deserves major awards for making Oldman look like the poster boy for decades of booze, smokes, greasy food, stress and betrayal from the books.
The first four episodes of Season 4 are ready to stream now, with a new one coming Wednesday. Anyone who wants to catch up, or binge watch a top-quality show, can stream the first three seasons, which all hold a Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. And Slow Horses season three won an Emmy.
Vince Vaughn’s Bad Monkey still pulling in big audiences
Photo: Apple TV+
Crime comedy Bad Monkey starring Vince Vaughn spent another week on the list most popular shows on streaming. The Apple TV+ show follows a former detective turned restaurant inspector solving an oddball murder in hopes of getting his old job back.
The unusual premise and Vaughn’s star power have kept the series in front of viewers. On JustWatch’s most recent streaming popularity chart, the series sits at No. 10. It debuted at No. 1 a few weeks ago.
Apple TV+ says of its comedy:
“Based on Carl Hiaasen’s New York Times bestselling novel and enduring cult favorite, Bad Monkey tells the story of Andrew Yancy (Vaughn), who has been bounced from the Miami Police Department and is now a health inspector in the Keys. But after stumbling upon a case that begins with a human arm fished up by tourists, he realizes that if he can prove murder, he’ll be back in. He just needs to get past a trove of Floridian oddballs and one bad monkey.”
The first eight episodes of Bad Monkey can be watched now, and the penultimate one appears this week. New episodes air on successive Wednesdays through October 9.
Watch these and more on Apple TV+
Streaming Slow Horses, Bad Monkey, plus many other series or films comes with a subscription to Apple TV+. The service is $9.99 per month with a seven-day free trial. You can also get it via any tier of the Apple One subscription bundle.
And Apple’s streaming video service also includes much more, of course. There’s a library of drama, comedies, musicals, children’s shows, nature documentaries, etc.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
