Slow Horses season 3

[Blue Jam]

Gawd it's good isn't it? Anyone else enjoying George Smiley Has Let Himself Go and Co.?

[Dex Sawash]

I don't think the s2 plot is very good so far but really like this show anyway. Just want more episodes asap.

[Mister Six]

Only seen the first episode, but it's class as usual. Hopefully they can keep it up to standard and complete the whole six-season run.

[Bourgyste]

I mean Gary Oldman is scoring for fun but is the series really that good?
Some of the things River does is simply ludicrous. And I really am happy that, thus far, Diana is on the bench and Peter/Ingrid have expanded roles.

[Mister Six]

Yes, it's really that good.

[Urinal Cake]

I mean Gary Oldman is scoring for fun but is the series really that good?
Some of the things River does is simply ludicrous. And I really am happy that, thus far, Diana is on the bench and Peter/Ingrid have expanded roles.

Yeah but that's sort of the point? Like he's acting like that because he's been raised on Bond and his grandfather's myth. And that people/MI5 are too slow and incompetent to react to him.

 It's like the season opener is like shit James Bond. I was like this is so stupid like why don't they a get proper surveillance team and a boat chase? But that's the point they are incompetent James Bonds if they're not fucking up with a vice or incompetence they're empty carrerists always politicking with a good wardrobe and some clever lines.

[Blue Jam]

It's like the season opener is like shit James Bond.

I was wondering if Jackson Lamb's medical was a deliberate nod to James Bond's medical in Skyfall, with the twist being that while Bond failed Lamb somehow passed.

I also liked the detail of River jumping off a walkway and twisting his ankle and spending the rest of the episode limping. Trying to do a heroic and impressive stunt and fucking it up just like a shit James Bond would.

[Dex Sawash]

I don't think the s2 plot is very good so far but really like this show anyway. Just want more episodes asap.

Meant S3 here 2L8 2edit

[Jim_MacLaine]

Is this worth joining this season or would I need to go back to the beginning?

[Mister Six]

Is this worth joining this season or would I need to go back to the beginning?

Go back to the beginning. But the first two seasons are ace and they're only six episodes each. You can (and will probably want to) cane them both in about a week, no problem.

[Dex Sawash]

Go back to the beginning. But the first two seasons are ace and they're only six episodes each. You can (and will probably want to) cane them both in about a week, no problem.

I was typing a load of shit that I couldn't make into proper sentences while you posted

[Urinal Cake]

Meant S3 here 2L8 2edit

Yeah I feel that too. The surface plot seems too naive. Like the real plot is for Ingrid, Jackson etc and it just does seem like a bunch of chess pieces being moved about. Which could be the point but I can't believe the primary antagonist being that naive given his history.

I also liked the detail of River jumping off a walkway and twisting his ankle and spending the rest of the episode limping. Trying to do a heroic and impressive stunt and fucking it up just like a shit James Bond would.

I think they even pan down to the ground floor to suggest that he might just do it. But then he jumps one floor and still rolls his ankle.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Just a reminder that season 4 is already in the can. If the show is renewed once again, it would go up to season 6, given that they produce two seasons back to back to save costs. Which also makes it a possibility that they could adapt the entire series by Mick Herron (eight books so far).

[Mister Six]

Is he still doing them? I thought the book series had concluded and it was all heading to some conclusive evidence. Bugger.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

The most recent Slough House book is Bad Actors from 2022, with a novella also published in the same year. His latest one is a standalone novel, The Secret Hours, but he's already announced that he's working on another Slough House book (last paragraph).

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/10/author-mick-herron-slough-house-slow-horses-spy-fiction-secret-hours-interview

[Urinal Cake]

So yeah it's all really about Diana vs Ingrid. And everybody except Lamb just goes along with it. But yeah it looks like Marcus

Spoiler alert

is probably Diana's inside man which has been set up since in S2

[close]

[Johnboy]

Massively enjoying this all the more since this thread highlighted to me that their carry on is supposed to be incompetent, nice one.

[Urinal Cake]

The more I think about it Ingrid is also incompetent or less of a magnificent bastard which Diana points out

Spoiler alert

by using Spider and Sean and River

[close]

but

Spoiler alert

just killing an agent seems like a blunt and clumsy way of getting rid of a leak

[close]

[Mister Six]

Gonna be so upset if Louisa gets killed. I think just about any of the others bar Jackson could go and I'd be all right with it, but I really like Louisa.

[Urinal Cake]

It will probably be Marcus

Spoiler alert

in a one on one with Duffy. Similar stats, personal animosity, Duffy is a certified cunt, Marcus is more competent Slough Horse and seems like a decent family man etc. Then River has a real antagonist. Spider was fun but Duffy is a real ghoul.

[close]

[Blue Jam]

River's conversation with his grandad and the mention of "A filing error"- was that a little actor allusion to Jonathan Pryce and Brazil?

[gabrielconroy]

Hard to see how they will escape this situation but presumably River will survive somehow, Donavan will die and hopefully Louisa also survives somehow.

Can see the big eared dog guy catching a bullet as well, would be quite satisfying.

[Mister Six]

Really, really enjoying this season, but one thing that's gnawing at me at bit is that it now seems to exist in a Hollywood action world, and the characters seem to know it. Obviously the show has always been larger than life and hardly intensely realistic, but at least the action itself always seemed relatively small-scale and physically plausible.

Now

Spoiler alert

they're doing the classic crap Hollywood thing of making the good guys invulnerable despite being ridiculously outgunned. Apparently Duffy's pistol can put a round through poor Douglas's head and out the back of a van, but full-on automatic weapons can't cut through a few shelves of paper? So a team of about 10 hardened mercs in full body armour aren't able to penetrate a single room defended with a couple of pistols because Louisa and River are scoring headshots each time, while their wild sprays of machinegun fire are stopped by some mouldy old paper and cardboard.

And apparently Marcus and Shirley are eager to take on a fully armed gang of mercs (with Marcus being the only one who knows about his machineguns) because they might get their jobs back? Are they not concerned they might get shot to bits? I mean, her at least - I guess he's got the adrenaline thing going. Again, it's like they know they're the goodies in a Hollywood movie, rather than real people who are very vulnerable to being perforated by numerically and logistically superior foes.

Seems like a different world the one where Min chases people around on his bike.

[close]

Spoiler alert

Duffy is a certified cunt, Marcus is more competent Slough Horse and seems like a decent family man etc. Then River has a real antagonist. Spider was fun but Duffy is a real ghoul.

[close]

True - got to say, I did enjoy Duffy grandstanding at the mercs' HQ though.

Dunno if

Spoiler alert

Marcus getting killed gives River much of a motive, though. I don't think he and River have even shared a scene, have they? The friendship pairings seem to be River/Louisa, Marcus/Shirley, Jackson/Catherine and Ho/nobody because he's a knob.

[close]

[jobotic]

Enjoyed that but the looking through the files was ridiculous. They must have got through about 1% of them.

Spoiler alert

Found it!

[close]

Shirley is really tedious too. Shame because I've really liked that actor in other things (Detectorists).

Still, good tense fun. Jackson made me laugh a lot at the house.

[Urinal Cake]

Really, really enjoying this season, but one thing that's gnawing at me at bit is that it now seems to exist in a Hollywood action world, and the characters seem to know it. Obviously the show has always been larger than life and hardly intensely realistic, but at least the action itself always seemed relatively small-scale and physically plausible.

Now

Spoiler alert

they're doing the classic crap Hollywood thing of making the good guys invulnerable despite being ridiculously outgunned. Apparently Duffy's pistol can put a round through poor Douglas's head and out the back of a van, but full-on automatic weapons can't cut through a few shelves of paper? So a team of about 10 hardened mercs in full body armour aren't able to penetrate a single room defended with a couple of pistols because Louisa and River are scoring headshots each time, while their wild sprays of machinegun fire are stopped by some mouldy old paper and cardboard.

And apparently Marcus and Shirley are eager to take on a fully armed gang of mercs (with Marcus being the only one who knows about his machineguns) because they might get their jobs back? Are they not concerned they might get shot to bits? I mean, her at least - I guess he's got the adrenaline thing going. Again, it's like they know they're the goodies in a Hollywood movie, rather than real people who are very vulnerable to being perforated by numerically and logistically superior foes.

Seems like a different world the one where Min chases people around on his bike.

[close]

True - got to say, I did enjoy Duffy grandstanding at the mercs' HQ though.

Dunno if

Spoiler alert

Marcus getting killed gives River much of a motive, though. I don't think he and River have even shared a scene, have they? The friendship pairings seem to be River/Louisa, Marcus/Shirley, Jackson/Catherine and Ho/nobody because he's a knob.

[close]

That's true but if

Spoiler alert

Marcus ends up helping save the day\River then River has a motive. But maybe it's more about building a rivalry with Duffy than any solidarity with Marcus.

The bashing River took from Hoobes and Duffy didn't really seen as personal by River even though it very much was by those two.  Which goes to Louisa's point about Spider. River mostly didn't take it  personally and he always fell for Spider's lie. Maybe with Duffy it will be different?

[close]

[Jim_MacLaine]

Go back to the beginning. But the first two seasons are ace and they're only six episodes each. You can (and will probably want to) cane them both in about a week, no problem.

Thanks. I'm really enjoying it. Theme is dog plop though and that Jagger vocal is excruciating.

[Mister Six]

Glad you're having fun with it, @Jim_MacLaine - I think it's pretty consistently great, so you've got some fun times ahead.

[jobotic]

Thanks. I'm really enjoying it. Theme is dog plop though and that Jagger vocal is excruciating.

It really is

[Urinal Cake]

It really is

Rhyming Poseurs with Losers

[Mister Six]

Boozers, not poseurs. Users would have been better, being a play both on Shirley's cole habit and the manipulative nature of several of the characters, but hey ho.

I don't mind the theme tune, to be honest. It's fine.