Slow Horses (Apple TV)

Rating:

They don’t waste time on Slow Horses, which is back for a much-anticipated fifth series.

Within moments of the opening titles, a young man with blank eyes was gunning people down in a suburban shopping centre. His first victim was a charming campaigner for the London mayor.

As silence fell, the gunman coolly surveyed his handiwork. And was shot very messily in the forehead by a mysterious assassin who escaped in a white van.

Yet that wasn’t the biggest shock of the first episode.

The big surprise to anybody who has been following events at Slough House is that tech nerd Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) has found himself a girlfriend.

Yes, somebody has gazed upon the super-conceited, socially awkward, man-bunned Iron Maiden fan and thought: “Phwoar! I’ll have some of that.”

They don’t waste time on Slow Horses, which is back for a much-anticipated fifth series

Pictured Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner and Sir Gary Oldman playing Jackson Lamb 

The fact that the woman in question looked like a supermodel should have raised more red flags than a Chinese military parade. His colleagues are, after all, supposed to be an intelligence unit, albeit a unit staffed by agents on the MI5 naughty step.

Roddy’s date could not have looked more like a honey trap if she’d been wearing a badge saying ‘Honey for Sale – Special Discounts For Nerdy MI5 Computer Types’.

But the work of saving Roddy was left to cocaine snorting, emotionally unstable Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), who suspected that Roddy’s near miss from a speeding white van was attempted murder.

Nobody else at Slough House believed it was a hit and run, but we viewers knew. We recognised the van as the assassin’s getaway vehicle.

Slow Horses has been described as dark comedy. It’s certainly dark, but is it comedy? It doesn’t really do jokes. The light moments are mostly black humour drawn from the ludicrous nature of intelligence work, with added office banter.

When Shirley followed Roddy and his date into a night club, she was in turn followed by River Cartwright. ‘I wonder if anybody’s checked me out since I got here,’ he mused.

‘I doubt it,’ said Shirley. ‘You’re profoundly asexual.’

She was probably right. Cartwright (Jack Lowden) spent the previous scene with his colleague Louisa, having one of those heart-to-heart romantic conversations in which both parties completely miss the point.

Jack Lowden and Tom Brooke also return for the fifth series 

Louisa had announced she was leaving Slough House for good, and not just taking a break. What Cartwright should have said was: ‘Oh no, that’s terrible! I will really miss you.’

Instead, he just blundered around in his usual limp way. Like pretty much all of the men in Slow Horses, he is emotionally incompetent. The women are also flawed, but usually ruthlessly efficient.

You’ll notice I’ve not mentioned the supposed star of the show, Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman). He appeared briefly, mostly to swear at his staff.

All in all, normal service at Slough House is resumed.