Slow Horses

Episode Reviews

Sept. 30, 2026 – S6, E3: “Resurrection”

Lamb sends his team out to collect everyone formerly associated with Slough House in order to take them to a safe house. Meanwhile, River is shocked to run into a colleague he believed to be dead.

Assassins pursue River and his colleague across the British countryside. In a couple of scenes, they get close enough to shoot bullets at the spies. We see a dead cow on the ground, a stray bullet through its temple. At one point, River and the other spy take refuge in an older woman’s home. The assassins catch up and try to force their way into the house, but River distracts them by setting off their car alarm and placing a lit cloth into their fuel tank. The car explodes shortly thereafter, but nobody is harmed.

Two women on Lamb’s team find one of their former Slow Horses passed out inside her home with the gas on—the work of assassins. Lamb’s agents are able to revive her and take her to safety, but everyone remains on edge, worried the killers might return.

We hear about how River’s colleague had been shot in the line of duty—and MI5 let people believe she had died. She shows someone the scar located at the base of her skull and jokes that the small bit of the bullet still stuck in there occasionally talks to her, reminding her not to get shot again. She also appears to have a nervous reaction to gunfire.

A woman throws her phone at a man’s head. Someone says the more people he kills, the more human he feels—and he asks his colleague if that makes him a psychopath.

An older woman says it’s a “shame” that coworkers can’t sleep together anymore due to girls “making a fuss about a bit of bottom-pinching,” and she wonders how else women are supposed to meet men. Someone comments that a man is “not as gay as he says he is” because she caught him with his hand up a woman’s skirt. Someone’s car air freshener appears to be cactus in the shape of men’s genitals.

Someone smokes a cigarette. A woman drinks a glass of liquor at work. Another woman claims she needs “a real drink” after a harrowing experience.

A woman vomits a couple of times after being exposed to poisonous gas. Lamb and a child take turns breaking wind to gross each other out.

Several people mock River for wearing a black suit—though they’re quick to apologize when they realize it’s a funeral suit. One person says it makes him look like a Mormon. Lamb is incredibly rude to several people, calling one woman fat. When he calls a child with dwarfism a “midget,” the child corrects him, saying he’s a dwarf. But Lamb continues to ridicule the child’s height.

A kid tries to sneak out of the group home where he’s been placed in foster care. Someone later implies the child’s dad put him there because he is annoying. (The kid does try to manipulate some adults into giving him what he wants.) A woman accuses her boss of hypocrisy. She later demotes someone for questioning her methods. A woman buys a gun that was obtained illegally, and the man selling it extorts her for extra cash.

We hear the f-word more than 30 times and the s-word about seven times. There are also uses of “b–tard,” “h—” and “p-ss,” as well as the British crudities “bloody,” “bint” and “bugger.” God’s name is misused about 10 times, and Jesus’ name is abused four times.

April 1, 2022—S1, E1: “Failure’s Contagious”

After prospective MI5 agent River Cartwright fails miserably during a training exercise, he’s sent to Slough House, where the agency keeps its most useless employees. Jackson Lamb seems determined to keep them useless. But when fellow Slough House agent Sid snags a thumb drive from a paranoid right-wing journalist, River suspects that it might be connected with some actual police work.

A man is beaten savagely before being tossed in the back of a van. Later, the kidnappers—who are affiliated with an extremist, racist group called the Sons of Albion—post a picture of their captive online, telling the world they’ll be cutting off his head in 24 hours.

We see River’s failed training exercise, wherein he knocks a police officer off his feet and throws him to the ground as he pursues his suspect. He and the suspect both jostle others, but River doesn’t catch the fleeing suspect in time. The suspect pushes a button, and a bright light goes off. We learn that had the threat been real, nearly 150 people would’ve died, and more than 200 would’ve been injured. We also see flashbacks of an apparent suicide. And River burns his hand on a “flashbox,” a box designed to hold a laptop or computer tablet with sensitive information on it.

Jackson Lamb wakes up after spending the night, apparently, on his office couch—his alarm being his own flatulence. His coffee table supports beer and whisky; he lights a cigarette as soon as he wakes up (and smokes throughout the episode). Booze bottles, both half-filled and emptied, seem to be his office’s prime decor. Ironically, he takes drinking jabs at his assistant, who later attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

A comedian makes a number of offensive religious jokes as part of his standup act, including one about “Jesus, Buddha and Allah walk(ing) into a pub,” and another making fun of Jesus’ crucifixion. River’s grandfather makes a reference to serving his time until his “sins are forgiven,” while Lamb tells River that he should’ve “skipped this Purgatory (meaning Slough House) and gone straight to h—.” A politician rails at immigrants.

We hear other profanities, too, including 25 f-words and seven s-words. Characters also say “a–,” “crap,” “p-ss,” “d–k” and the British profanity “bloody.” God’s name is misused once, and Jesus’ name is abused four times.

April 1, 2022—S1, E2: “Work Drinks”

As MI5 seeks to find the hostage before his extremist kidnappers kill him, River and fellow agent Sid try to figure out if a right-wing journalist has any connection to the kidnappings. Meanwhile, as River and Sid spy on the journalist, Diana Taverner—MI5’s second in command—seems to be spying on Slough House.

The episode opens in the kidnappers’ hideout, where the extremists insult various ethnic groups and nationalities while gleefully anticipating tomorrow’s execution. One goes down to the basement to threaten the hostage, and later he takes a bucket for the man to go to the bathroom in. (There’s a suggestion that the man, of Middle Eastern descent and someone whose parents are Muslim, would somehow sully the house’s actual bathroom.) When the hostage tells one of his captors that he was born in Britain, the captor says, “Jesus was born in a stable. Don’t make him a f—ing donkey.”

A masked assailant struggles with someone and shoots an agent in the head. We see the agent bleed profusely from the injury, but it’s not clear by episode’s end whether it was a fatal shot. A booby trap burns through a laptop and sets an apartment on fire. A kidnapper talks about how many people he’s killed. He knows of five for sure. “Watched the life drain out of their eyes.” He suspects that he might’ve killed eight or nine others. “Sometimes you don’t stop to count.”

Jackson Lamb waves away the stench after he passes gas. His assistant, Catherine, knows that he must be worried about something: “It’s mid-morning and you haven’t had a drink yet,” she marvels. (He responds by telling the alcoholic that in days gone by, she’d be on her “third stomach pump by now.”) He tells Catherine to tie River to his desk by his testicles (using a much cruder term), so he doesn’t go out wandering. An IT expert at Slough House refers to himself as somewhere between “an emperor and a god.” He calls police “pigs,” even though he’s technically one of them.

Someone orders a vodka soda at a pub. Characters smoke. Several people seem to lie.

Characters say the f-word about 20 times and the s-word another nine. We also hear plenty of others, including “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “h—,” “tw-t,” “b–locks,” “pr–k,” “p-ss” and the British profanity “bloody.” God’s name is misused three times, and Jesus’ name is abused another four.