As one door is pushed shut by a grimy MI5 boss, another creaks open \u2014 and out steps an oddball private detective who washes in the sink of their office. This week we bid goodbye to Slow Horses series five, but this doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s time to mothball your television for another year if you\u2019re a fan of stories of outsiders battling against the system. <\/p>\n
It has taken Apple a while to cotton on, but finally the Mick Herron Cinematic Universe (HCU: will it catch on?) is born. We\u2019re treated to our first adaptation of the author\u2019s work from outside the beloved Slough House series. And with Halloween upon us, I can say there are no tricks here, only treats. <\/p>\n
Things kick off in Oxford as we\u2019re introduced to bored art restorer Sarah Tucker (a fine performance by Ruth Wilson) who by day is undervalued and by night (well, on this first night) helps her financier husband entertain at their home. It\u2019s during dinner with a particularly important and irksome client Gerard (Tom Goodman-Hill) that things take a turn and the evening is cut short by a gas explosion at a neighbour\u2019s house. But this is the HCU (still trying), so that\u2019s not the end of things, it\u2019s only the beginning. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Read more TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n When Sarah realises that one of the injured children has mysteriously disappeared, she turns amateur sleuth. Her mission: to find the girl, and some answers. By chance, she ends up at the dank Oxford offices of an uninterested private investigator, Zo\u00eb Boehm (Emma Thompson), and her husband Joe (Adam Godley). Before long she\u2019s mixed up in Zo\u00eb\u2019s world as the pair form an unlikely duo who are up against a lot more than they first thought.<\/p>\n Based on Herron\u2019s first novel and with a snappy screenplay by Morwenna Banks, also a writer on Slow Horses<\/a>, there\u2019s more than a bit of Slough House about this \u2014 from Thompson\u2019s towering performance as the complicated, broken and mysterious Boehm, who has shades of Gary Oldman\u2019s underestimated Jackson Lamb<\/a>, to the jet black humour and changes in mood and tone. <\/p>\n There\u2019s also Darren Boyd\u2019s dastardly spy chief C, looming over his downtrodden minion Hamzar (Adeel Akhtar) and trying to make Sarah and Zo\u00eb look the other way. \u201cSo you will tell the chief medical officer to pull his finger out of his arsehole and sign her discharge summary \u2014 with his shitty finger if it speeds things up!\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Five more shows to watch after <\/b>Slow Horses<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n This is a show that treads a path through spies, lives and unravelling mysteries in such a way as to keep you hooked. Conspiracies grow deeper and plots thicken on a low heat but are punctuated by genuine shocks. And every step of the way we\u2019re reminded of life\u2019s mundanities \u2014 the effort of personal grooming, a hand accidentally dunked in a takeaway container and the dog-eared pages of our protagonists\u2019 lives. <\/p>\n While Ruth Wilson\u2019s Sarah may be the way you\u2019re drawn into this adventure, Emma Thompson\u2019s delightfully acerbic Zo\u00eb Boehm is the reason to stay. And with three further books in the Boehm series, there\u2019s every chance we could see the Herronverse (that\u2019s better) move into a new gear as viewers get a taste for it. Here\u2019s hoping. Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a>, the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a>, the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to what to watch this week<\/a>, and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As one door is pushed shut by a grimy MI5 boss, another creaks open \u2014 and out steps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-535090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115456628687991410","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Episode one and two are available now on Apple TV<\/b>+, with new episodes every Wednesday<\/b><\/p>\n