Slow Horses Review: Failure’s Contagious / Work Drinks (Season 1 Episodes 1 and 2)

Slow Horses Season 1 Episode 1, “Failure’s Contagious,” and Slow Horses Season 1 Episode 2, “Work Drinks,” introduce us to the world of MI5 and reveals what happens to spies who make grave mistakes on the job.

It’s a decent start to the series. In addition to getting a sense of the MI5 pecking order, we also learn a bit about all the people working at Slough House. Granted, we may not be able to recall everyone’s names, but we have a general idea about who they are as people, and, for some, why they ended up in Slough House.

Jackson Lamb is the biggest mystery of the series so far. It’s hard to decipher if he really wants everyone who works for him to do absolutely nothing, or if that’s an act he is putting on and he is starting to run an operation out of there.

He’s an intriguing character, that’s for sure, and I’d love for him to be secretly pulling people’s strings. It would be an improvement over who he appears to be at first glance.

To be honest, while watching “Work Drinks,” I found myself wondering if I’d feel compelled to tune into the rest of this series. Both episodes are more on the slow side with not a lot happening, at least not that we can make sense of right now.

And then, Sid reveals she is in Slough House to keep an eye on River, and moments later, she is shot and potentially dying. It’s safe to say that I’ll watch Slow Horses Season 1 Episode 3, ” Bad Tradecraft,” to see if she makes it out alive — I hope she does.

Sid is the most likable character so far, and her relationship with River has offered some levity. They’ve got a good bit of banter going and are currently the saving grace of the series. So I refuse to believe we are going to lose her because we’d be losing too good of a plot point as well as a wonderful character.

“Work Drinks” does something that I really hate — makes us spend time with the kidnappers. There is rarely a good reason to do this.

Perhaps I’ve been burned by too many bad episodes of Criminal Minds, but most of the time, spending time watching the bad guy doesn’t offer anything of value, especially when the goal of the episode/season is for the good guys to catch the bad ones.

The same holds true here. The random kidnappers aren’t entertaining, and it takes the show a bit to even reveal that those are the kidnappers. We’re simply dropped into their conversation, waiting for something to make sense or become interesting.

There’s never anything exciting that comes out of spending time with them. The closest we get is the one kidnapper having a secret phone stashed away in the bathroom. It’s unclear why that is relevant at this point, but it is at least unexpected.

What did you think of this episode of Slow Horses? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of Slow Horses premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.

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