spy thrillers

In the crowded landscape of spy shows and movies, Apple TV’s Tehran cuts through the noise with a visceral intensity few titles can match. This Israeli thriller, which started airing season three on January 9, doesn’t just tell a spy story. It grabs you by the throat from the first frame and doesn’t let go until the credits roll.

For anyone who’s ever found themselves disappointed by the too-fast or too-slow pacing or predictable plotting of typical spy dramas, Tehran, now streaming season three (with a fourth on the way), offers a masterclass in sustained tension and genuine surprise. That makes it easy to forgive the subtitles, which most people will need for the Farsi (Persian) and Hebrew spoken on the show. 

The acclaimed Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning spy drama series Slow Horses, starring Academy Award winner Gary Oldman, gallops toward a green-lighted sixth season even as season 4 just concluded October 9, Apple TV+ said Tuesday. This continues a trend. Season 5 won approval right after the season 3 finale — well before season 4 aired. And it also makes Slow Horses the streamer’s longest-running show by number of seasons. Though admittedly, at six episodes apiece, they’re not long seasons.

“Audiences around the world have fallen in love with the Slow Horses, and I’m delighted that Gary Oldman will be leading this star-studded cast on another acerbic and action-packed adventure,” said Jay Hunt, creative director, Europe, Apple TV+.

The trailer for Slow Horses season 5, coming to Apple TV+ in 2025, didn’t drop on YouTube or on the Apple website, per usual. Instead, the teaser for the darkly funny espionage thriller’s next season is tacked on to the end of the season 4 finale on Apple TV+, which aired Wednesday. But we found the trailer in standalone form on a magazine website, included below.

This time, Slough House IT guy and arrogant doofus Roddy Ho, played by Australian singer and actor Christopher Chung, is at the center of the action. And River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar) share an awkward kiss for some reason.

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.

London is under threat from shopping-mall car bombers and espionage masterminds, and somehow Gary Oldman’s MI5 screwups once again end up in the middle of the action. That’s according to the new Slow Horses season four trailer for the black-comedy spy-thriller series.

The Emmy-nominated and BAFTA-winning series stars Oldman as MI5’s irascible Slough House section chief Jackson Lamb. The six-episode season premieres September 4 on Apple TV+.

UPDATE: Season 4 of Slow Horses gets underway Wednesday with the first episode, entitled “Identity Theft,” on Apple TV+. “A London bombing triggers and explosive hidden past,” notes the streamer’s tagline. A season review in The Guardian calls the show “faultlessly directed,” notes the cast is even better than before and says “Gary Oldman roars like a bear dipped in chip fat.”

Here’s your eagerly awaited dead drop, Slow Horses fans: The fourth season of the BAFTA Award-winning espionage series returns to Apple TV+ on September 4, according to the “first look” the streamer gave Thursday. That’s the image above. And once again, some makeup artist deserves major awards for making Gary Oldman look like sagging spymaster Jackson Lamb, poster boy for decades of booze, smokes, greasy food, stress and betrayal.

The action-comedy romance film Argylle stayed near the top of streaming popularity charts for a third week. The Apple TV+ spy-vs-spy thriller is chock full of celebrities.

Plus, the dark, gritty series Sugar continues to pull in big audiences on Apple’s streaming service for another week, too. It features Colin Farrell as a private investigator solving a mystery.

The action-comedy romance film Argylle finally reached Apple TV+. The spy thriller turns spy-movie tropes upside down.

The star-studded movie — there’s Henry Cavill, Dua Lipais and many more — is not a hit with critics but it does fairly well with audiences.

For a would-be blockbuster packed with A-list Hollywood talent, the Apple TV+ spy thriller Argylle coming to theaters next month sure flew under the radar until recently. And not only is the high-concept global romp starring Henry Cavill, Dua Lipa and everyone else in Hollywood seeming to come out of nowhere. So is the developing Argylle movie franchise, which could dominate screens for years.

Turns out Argylle is based on book four of a novel series that has only just released book one. Does that mean a whopping four Argylle movies will come to Apple TV+? Or maybe even more?

The darkly comedic spy thriller series Slow Horses has three seasons ready to binge-watch on Apple TV+ — season 3’s finale aired last week — plus season 4 on the way and now a fifth season planned for production, the streaming service said Tuesday.

The critically acclaimed hit show starring Gary Oldman might as well keep rolling, as there are more novels in Mick Herron’s Slough House book series to base new six-episode seasons on.

Slow Horses, the Apple TV+ spy thriller based on the Slough House novels by British novelist Mick Herron, spices up its twisty-turny plots with witty dialogue and convincing performances.

Lead character Jackson Lamb, a rumpled British spook played by Gary Oldman, runs the misfit spy shop known as Slough House. Everyone on his team (known as the “Slow Horses”) screwed up in a major way professionally, earning them their one-way ticket to Lamb’s dusty, low-rent M15 leper colony. Lamb torments them at nearly every turn with a mordant mix of skepticism and ridicule.

Here are three reasons you should watch Slow Horses the Apple TV+, which fires up its third season today.

Apple TV+ is cranking up the action in espionage-thriller series Slow Horses, if the season 3 trailer it dropped Tuesday is any indication.

Dissipated Cold War-era spy Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) sees his Slough House crew of remedial MI5 agents come under major attack, and one of them is kidnapped by an elite military unit. Is it an inside job? Per previous seasons, the Slow Horses tend to get in trouble with their more-accomplished MI5 colleagues.

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.

It looks like something big and bad is about to happen to London, and it may fall to a team of remedial MI5 back-benchers to step up and stop it.

That’s at least according to the season 2 trailer of the darkly comedic Apple TV+ espionage thriller Slow Horses, which dropped Wednesday. The series resumes December 2. Watch the trailer below.

There’s nothing like discovering a truly rich and deep source of entertainment — like a darkly amusing TV series that you find out is made from a whole lineup of engrossing books that you at least aspire to read. Such is the case with Slow Horses on Apple TV+, adapted from a series of spy-thriller novels by Mick Herron.

The dozen books and subsequent TV show rise from a complex world of spy circles with Cold War underpinnings leading into and out of MI5. That’s the U.K.’s primary security agency, sort of like the FBI in the U.S. In the story, a dysfunctional team of MI5 agents relegated to “Slough House” become embroiled in matters of national security, often at odds with M15 first-stringers.

Even if you’ve got a good ear for U.K. and European accents, you may still find yourself baffled by the in-jokes, shop talk and slang coming out of the characters’ mouths. Good thing there are helpful reference materials out there, like a whole glossary of terms.