Slow Horses: season 4 of Gary Oldman spy drama gets a release date and first-look images

Slow Horses, Apple TV+’s brilliant darkly comic thriller is returning for a fourth season – and fans have finally been given a release date and first-look images.

Mark your diaries: the show returns on September 4 with a double-episode premiere. After that, there’ll be a new episode every week, with the grand finale on October 2.

Season four will continue the espionage story – based on the Slough House book series by Mick Herron – of a set of rather rubbish spies. They are too bad at their jobs to do proper intelligence work, but still too well-trained to completely bin off.

Previous mistakes they have made include leaving a highly-classified file on a train (Bond would never) and completely botching a drill to take down a terrorist threat.

These misfits are sent to Slough House, where they do menial tasks – trapped slogging through administrative work perhaps forever more.

That is, until, for a number of reasons – including the ambitions of one young spy River (Jack Lowden) and the arrogance of Slough House boss Jackson (Oldman) – the whole department is dragged back into proper spy business. Excited to be out of the career purgatory, Slough Houses’s spooks take the investigations seriously, but predictably often make a hash of things.

The result is a hilarious but also nail-biting British thriller that has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA and won several British Academy Television Craft awards.

For season four the returning cast includes Academy Award-nominee Kristin Scott Thomas, who plays deputy director general of MI5, Lowden, Rosalind Eleazar, who plays Slough House spy Louisa, and Academy Award-nominee Jonathan Pryce who plays River’s retired MI5 officer grandad.

“From the get go, this is nervy, visceral stuff but it still has heaps of fun letting all the players mercilessly banter each other into oblivion,” said the Standard, reviewing its third season. “The previous seasons set the bar high, but this is probably the best yet.”

See more first-look images below.

Slow Horses season four will return to Apple TV+ on September 4, 2024