Warning: contains spoilers for Slow Horses season 4 episode 4 “Returns”
It doesn’t look good for Bad Sam. The former head Dog is currently two stomps of Le French Assassin’s boot away from visiting the great safe house in the sky. Assuming that Lamb isn’t about to drive his Hackney Carriage onto the nth floor of that office block and rescue him for a second time, it’s curtains for Chapman.
Ah well, by the sounds of it, the result would have been the same had Taverner got hold of him. Bad Sam, we learn, did an extremely off-the-books op for David Cartwright back in the day, and if the Park were ever to find out, they’d have both their guts for garters.
30-odd years ago, Cartwright turned a Volvo Estate into a crime piñata by stuffing it with cash, guns, explosives and MI5-issued fake IDs, and had Sam hand over to a young Frank Harkness in Les Arbres. Why? To buy a girl.
No wonder she slapped him. Harkness traded that young woman, a member of his harem, like chattel. She didn’t want to go, but that was the deal – her, in exchange for all those illicit goodies. What made her so valuable to David Cartwright? Slow Horses has yet to come out and say it, but the smart money says that she was his daughter, and River’s mother. River had fixated on that nursery mural at Les Arbres because he recognised the handiwork of the artist – the same one whose hand-painted birthday cards he’d received as a child.
It looks like River’s daddy is a baddie. More than that, he’s an abusive, murderous, conscienceless mercenary who tortures his injured sons and doesn’t even have the backbone to be doing any of this for his own unhinged beliefs – he’s doing it for cash, as provided by any questionable regime paying. Those 23 deaths caused by the Westacres bomb? An unfortunate hiccup caused by “a weak link in his organisation”, by which he means one of the sons he bred like puppies and brainwashed. What should have been a simple hit turned into a national tragedy, says Harkness. Oops, his bad. In the battle of the father-figures, it certainly puts Jackson Lamb’s greasy farts in perspective.
Episode four was our first real introduction to Harkness, who’s shaping up to be Slow Horses’ most cartoonish antagonist yet. With his gravelly voice and narrowed-eyed glare, Hugo Weaving is just a fluffy white cat short of being a Bond villain. Negotiating the retention of his limbs in that hotel suite (gorgeous, by the way. Bad guys always have the most elegant décor, while the heroes – or in Lamb’s case, the chaotic neutral – slump about next to nicotine-stained polyester), Harkness aimed for charm but it’s clear that he’s a spherical bastard, i.e. a bastard as observed from any angle.
On the subject of bastards, David Cartwright is now in the custody of Slough House, thanks to Sam and Standish’s entertaining double-act. Yes, he’s on Harkness’ ‘Kill by Midnight Or Else’ list, but the éminence grise of the service is also in the back of Jackson Lamb’s cab, which is where I’d want to be in his situation. Last season, we saw Lamb take out two trained killers using a can of Pringles, so if anybody can protect Cartwright, it’s him. Unless Lamb just decides to fuck the whole thing off, delivers Cartwright to Taverner, and goes for a curry, which would be equally likely from our hard-to-pin-down lead.
Standish wouldn’t stand for that, of course. Wouldn’t you know, Lamb got his own way with her. Like a parent handling a child’s tantrum, he allowed Catherine to get her protest out of her system, and lo and behold, she’s back in the fold, sitting in on debriefings and rolling her eyes whenever time Lamb cruelly pours her a drink. It’s as if she never left – which is of course, exactly how Lamb wants it.
Back at the Park, things aren’t going the way Taverner wants it. Whelan’s sliming his way around HQ, clasping hands and doubtless doing that thing when sociopaths memorise a single fact about you to pretend you matter to them (‘Terry! How’s the caravan?’). James Callis is superb casting by the way; anybody who’s seen Battlestar Galactica knows that nobody can do politician smarm like he can. Contrast Whelan desperately pressing the flesh with Taverner surveilling her kingdom from on high like a wicked queen in a fairytale. Of course hostilities between them are now out in the open. The question is, will Whelan last beyond the season finale, or is Taverner stuck with him?
She’s resigned herself to being stuck with Jackson Lamb, with whom she shared a characteristic volley of insults while ducking out of that London rain. (“What goodness? What heart?”.) Their open-hostilities double-act is always a highlight and season four could do with much more of it. It feels almost criminal that there are only two episodes to go and we haven’t seen nearly enough of Lamb. Oldman’s character is a rare commodity and rightly used sparingly, but it’s hard not to wish for eight episodes instead of six per season, if only to have the honour of watching the man get his bunions filed or do his weekly shop.
We’re seeing much more of Jack Lowden’s River, to whom this season really belongs. His chase through St Pancras revisited this show’s very first scene, in which River ran hell-for-leather through Stansted Airport on his failed training mission, sending holidaymakers flying in his wake. This time, he made it out, only to fall at Emma Flyte’s last hurdle. “Nice to finally meet you,” she said coolly, days after attending the scene of his murder. He’s going to fall for her, isn’t he? She’s just his type.
Slow Horses season 4 episode 5 arrives on Apple TV+ on Wednesday Oct 2.
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