Slow Horses
I don’t think there is a more frustrating service in the streaming era among the major players than Apple TV+. But the issue is not quality, but reach. Marketing. Whatever it takes to actually get people to watch your shows.
Apple TV+, despite having the single best batting average of any service in terms of the quality programs it puts out, still has not broken 10% market share after five years, and as such, Apple is reportedly scaling back on spending in the future. But it has produced some truly incredible programming and I am begging you watch its best, Slow Horses, which just premiered its fourth season, currently scoring a 100% among critics.
Slow Horses is a British series following a group of rejected-but-not-fired MI5 agents shipped off to Slough House to work on unimportant cases. Though every season, they seem to find themselves tangled up in them anyway.
They are led by Jackson Lamb, a formerly top-tier agent who has now regressed into an utter mess. It is truly one of the best performances on TV from Gary Oldman, who has said he’ll play the role forever if they let him, and there is a reason for both his Emmy nominations and the show’s.
Slow Horses
Slow Horses has been almost impossibly well-received by critics and audiences. Now in season 4, I think this may actually be one of the overall-highest scored TV shows ever in terms of ones that have run this many seasons. On Rotten Tomatoes we have:
- Slow Horses season 1 – 95% critic, 92% audience
- Slow Horses season 2 – 100% critic, 94% audience
- Slow Horses season 3 – 98% critic, 95% audience
- Slow Horses season 4 – 100% critic, 96% audience
Overall – 98% critic, 94% audience. Again, you do not see these numbers across really any shows that have run for 4+ seasons now, and if anything, the show is going up in quality over time.
It’s funny, it’s thrilling, all of its performances are stellar, not just Oldman’s, and you know one of the best parts? It’s consistent. Not just in terms of quality, but in terms of release dates. The pace of this show’s seasonal releases are insane. It’s produced four seasons in three years. Look at these dates:
- Season 1 – April 2022
- Season 2 – December 2022
- Season 3 – November 2023
- Season 4 – September 2024
What kind of show do you know that has under a year between releases? Being six episodes helps but also the show just relentlessly filming, often back-to-back, is how this is possible, and I really have not seen anything else like it on TV where almost all shows now have 1.5-2+ years in between every season.
It’s a stellar spy series, one of the best ever. You would be doing yourself a disservice by not watching it and it’s worth the price of a month or two of Apple TV+ by itself. But there are 20 other good shows there as well no one is talking about.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
