Slow Horses is the spy caper of the year
It's John le Carré with really good gags
Kia ora and welcome back to Rec Room, The Spinoff’s pop culture and entertainment newsletter brought to you by Panasonic. This week I tried out TVNZ’s new Ioan Gruffud-starring, Cote d’Azur-set thriller The Reunion (too silly for my tastes) and lasted around half an hour into Wednesday, Netflix’s hugely popular Addams Family spinoff (seems fine, but again, not for me). What did I like? The return of Slow Horses on Apple TV+. More on that below, then stick around for some great guest recs from my colleagues Duncan Greive and Sam Brooks.
- Catherine McGregor
Slow Horses is the spy caper of the year
Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
The lowdown
First things first: it’s got nothing to do with horses. “Slow horses” is a nickname for the disgraced agents sent to Slough House, the grotty MI5 outpost at the centre of Mick Herron’s series of spy novels of the same name. When Apple TV+ decided to start adapting Herron’s books it was presumably decided that “Slough House” was too mundane a title, or perhaps too redolent of the smell of paper manufacturing.
Slow Horses, the show, debuted in April this year. Now, just seven months since season one ended, it’s already making a very welcome return.
Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner in Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
The good
The very best thing about Slow Horses has nothing to do with spying at all. It’s Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb – a deceptively innocent moniker for one of the most terrifically foul characters to ever cross our screens. He burps. He farts. He smokes. His hair is lank and greasy. The front of his overcoat is stained black from decades of buttoning and unbuttoning with ashy fingers. He’s horrible to everyone, particularly his own staff, whom he routinely insults as losers and morons.
And yet, the slovenly Jackson Lamb is an utter delight to watch. Oldman doesn’t just inhabit his character, he rolls around inside him like a pig in freshly churned mud. He’s great in every scene he shambles into, but the ones with his boss, MI5 bigwig Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), and his protégé, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), are where you find the real gold. Diana’s frosty disdain for him during their canalside tete-a-tetes is glorious; the two of them are so good together you wish they could go on trading barbs forever. River’s visible disgust at Jackson’s abhorrent table manners, meanwhile, is one of Slow Horses’ best running gags.
It feels a little trite to call Slow Horses “uniquely English” but what other nation could make a spy thriller as sardonic as this? It’s John le Carré with really good jokes, where nothing works out as it should (until, somehow, eventually, it does), and even the team’s most ambitious and talented young agent – in fact, especially him – gets thwarted at every turn, often by those on his own side.
River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) in Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the plot yet, and that’s because while the story is gripping enough – this time around the team are on the trail of sleeper Russian agents embedded in British society – it’s not really the point of Slow Horses. You watch it for the depiction of authentically messy spycraft, for the snappy pacing, for the London locations (which have had a subtle glow-up since wintry season one), and for the best intra-office insults since Veep. And you watch it for Jackson Lamb, the greatest horrible character currently on TV.
The bad
I love pretty much everything about Slow Horses, so I’m reaching here. But Mick Jagger’s theme song, ‘Strange Game’? Just awful.
The verdict
Season one of Slow Horses was wonderful; season two is faster, funnier and even more assured. There are nine other books in Mick Herron’s Slough House series – here’s hoping Gary Oldman and crew are around for many more seasons to come. (Apple TV+)
Music rec: Getting in a big room and feeling it all again
Pre-pandemic, big live shows were just there – available, beautiful, just another entertainment commodity. Until they stopped. I spent the better part of three years away from venues which had been a huge part of my life for decades (my first job in journalism was reviewing live music).
And now they’re back. Over the past month I’ve seen four shows in Auckland, two at Spark Arena, one at the Town Hall and Big Thief just this weekend at the Powerstation. Each had its own special energy, a different audience drawn there for their own idiosyncratic reasons. The experience has gone from somewhat disorientating to comfortably familiar again, while retaining this sense of wonder – large, international live shows were gone from my life for long enough that my subconscious had begun to imagine it might be forever.
The gap between Dua Lipa and Big Thief yawns, but each was exceptional in its own way – the arena pop show dazzlingly engineered and orchestrated, the indie rock show the opposite, woolly, primal, deliberately under-staged. One thing both artists shared was a vocal appreciation for everyone involved in making the production happen – an expression of gratitude at getting to do it again at all, but also an acknowledgement that live touring is still a workplace. Big Thief’s show ended with the band making short speeches to a sound engineer ending her run with the band, and it felt like we were at Friday drinks eavesdropping on the farewell of a beloved colleague. It was a gorgeous, unrepeatable intimacy, the kind of thing live music delivers over and over. This little run of gigs has made me resolve to make the effort every chance I get, and I recommend you do the same.
- Duncan Greive
Comedy rec: Kate Berlant’s Cinnamon in the Wind
The best thing I can say about Cinnamon in the Wind is that it deserves to be a cult hit on Netflix. Instead, you’ll find it nestled amongst the crop of Hulu projects that end up on Disney+. Comedian Kate Berlant, who you might’ve seen on TV in The Other Two or A League of Their Own, or in the film Don’t Worry Darling, made waves in New York earlier this year for her subversive, universally acclaimed one-woman show, Kate. Filmed in 2019 and, like Kate, directed by Bo Burnham, Cinnamon in the Wind is Berlant at her most raw: extremely improvised, ridiculously meta, and surgeon-like in how she skewers the entire concept of stand-up comedy, and the role of audiences and performers in live shows. It might sound a bit heady, but honestly? Cinnamon in the Wind is also really damn funny and silly. I’d recommend it to anybody. (Disney+)
- Sam Brooks
On The Spinoff: The 20 most memorable MAFS AU participants of all time
Join Duncan Greive, Jane Yee and Alex Casey as they reminisce about the greatests MAFS AU players, featuring Pasta a la Troy, “I’m not your therapist”, Jessika Power’s vocal fry and much more.
Random links
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles has just been named the greatest film of all time. What’s it about? Housework, mostly.
A detailed review of all the steamy sex scenes in Lady Chatterley’s Lover on Netflix.
A detailed review of all the male butts in White Lotus season two.
Much has been written about the songwriting genius of the late Christine McVie. Here Vulture pays tribute to her wonderful voice, “an ache in auditory form”.
What’s new to Netflix NZ, Neon and other streaming services in December.
Why the worst recipes imaginable are blowing up on TikTok (or, why I recently rage-quit reddit.com/r/stupidfood).
Those ads for candlelight concerts on Facebook? They’re not scams – but they’re not exactly honest either.
From Kate Bush to Gerry Rafferty, old music was everywhere again in 2022.
The reviews for the Noah Baumbach movie adaptation of Don De Lillo’s White Noise are not great.
Have you seen the Emily Bronte biopic? Claire Mabey did, and she has thoughts.
That’s it for Rec Room for this week. If you liked what you read, why not share Rec Room with your friends and whānau.