Yahoo News Slow Horses season 4's end scene is one of the biggest changes so far
The final episode of Slow Horses season four brought the fight into Slough House itself: the creaking, decrepit office building where just getting in past the door requires enough brute force to make its staff question if admission is even worth the bother.
In the sixth episode, a shoot-out unfolded as Frank Harkness's titanium son Patrice (Tom Wozniczka), powered by industrial-strength painkillers, ascended each floor to get up to Jackson Lamb's sloppy office where our Slow Horses hid. On his way up, he came up against Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan) and won.
The loss of Marcus, after our dear, late Min – anyone with a name beginning with 'M' should clearly be on high alert in Slough House – was one of many blows in an emotionally poignant finale, alongside the mortal mauling of 'Bad' Sam Chapman (Sean Gilder) and River's (Jack Lowden) decision to put his grandfather (Jonathan Pryce) into a home.
The impact of Marcus' death is set to have a lasting effect according to Catherine Standish's actress Saskia Reeves, who opened up about this tense finale during an exclusive interview with Digital Spy.
"We all knew that there was going to be a big loss at the end of four, as there was at the end of two with Min," said Reeves, who added that the death would have "a profound effect on everybody" in "many different ways".
Well, that certainly sets the scene for an intriguing season five. The events that transpired in the finale have also opened a route to eroding the shell around characters still with us – namely, Lamb (Gary Oldman) – who we've only ever had a skin-deep understanding of.
The Apple TV+ show has so far been reticent to give us much of Lamb beyond his timely flatulence and withering put-downs. Slow Horses has been given the prestige TV treatment, but compared to the leading men of shows like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos, we really don't know much about why Lamb is the way he is.
Now, four seasons in, with a fifth on the way, conversations around the show have started to broach the possibility that it's becoming rather same old, same Old(man).
Each time around, our gang of loser spies have to do enough to save the day but not so much that their continued presence within the Slough House gulag becomes untenable. It's a delicate tightrope. One of the ways the show and writer Mick Herron try to overcome repetition is with a constant churn of personnel to mix up the dynamics.
But the core cast stays much the same, as does their characterization. This is the long-form TV dilemma: to have characters who change as we go along, or those who reset as soon as the credits roll on each episode. Slow Horses has so far traded in the latter, but so many seasons of thick plot in, we can't keep falling back on the fart jokes forever.
But perhaps we won't: the last scene of this fourth season presents instead a daring new peek into the Lamb's inner workings.
The final moment of the season sees Lamb summon River to a London boozer to sign some paperwork. After that's done, Lamb says: "You can stay and have a drink if you like. As long as you get your own and don’t say a word."
River, who has spent season after season making one harebrained move after another in the hopes of winning over Lamb, is clearly chuffed. The pair sit at the bar together in silence and for the first time during the entire show, Lamb hasn't told River to get lost.
This is the first time we've ever seen Lamb close to softening. He's genuinely affected by Sam Chapman's death and moved enough by Marcus's to go out on a limb to Taverner to okay ten-year payments to his family.
We've seen him reveal to Diana Taverner – the closest thing he has to a peer – that Slough House was meant to be a place where "no one else had to get hurt" (implying the toll on his psyche caused by having to execute Charles Partner at David Cartwright's command). And he was sentimental enough about ex-joe Dickie Bow that he Blu-tacked his name to the Spooks' Wall at St Leonard's church in season two.
But those are explanatory glimpses of his past, not changes in the present.
The chipping away at Lamb's no-sods-given exterior presents a whole new dimension to the show. We could finally understand how he went from the smooth professionalism of someone like Oldman's Smiley character in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to the current washed-up agent drinking his days away.
But this sudden sentimentality also poses a risk to the beloved Slow Horses set-up, since a more emotionally available Lamb could smooth over the show's sharpened teeth. The balancing act of revealing Lamb as nicer than we first took him to be – when he took every opportunity to berate his joes – is making sure he doesn't then start to become a sort of twee, loveable grump.
Until that point, with the fourth season's ending, Slow Horses might finally be prepared to let us in a bit.
Slow Horses seasons 1-4 are streaming on Apple TV+.
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