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Slow Horses is back for its sixth season. Thoughts on the spy comedy's premiere, "Circle of Life" — with spoilers — coming up just as soon as I know that "round" isn't a food group...
Alan Sepinwall
We're coming off what I felt was the funniest (if not necessarily the best) Slow Horses season, and the last one made with Will Smith in charge. New showrunner Gaby Chiappe has a tough act to follow on multiple levels, as well as the challenge of having to combine the plots of two different Mick Herron novels, Joe Country and Slough House(*), in a season that brings back lots and lots of characters from previous seasons.
(*) Two book reminders: 1)I only read the first couple of the books, so anything I say on that front is coming from second and third-hand info, and will be minimized; 2)In the comments, try to stick to the events of the show as much as possible. Slow Horses doesn't depend on surprise as much as some other prestige serialized TV, but let's nonetheless let non-readers discover things as the show reveals them.
Yet based on both "Circle of Life" and the rest of the season(*), Chiappe and company have just as strong a grasp on the very specific tone of Slow Horses as Smith did. And the idea of this season being a Slow Horses Greatest Hits provides some extra juice at a moment when the series could easily risk feeling tired or formulaic.
Alan Sepinwall