Slow Horses Season 2 Review: Another Decent Adaption With a Dark Humour!

The risk of re-visiting something that was pleasantly surprising the first time around is that it will no longer be so. If you enjoy a book, film, or TV show & know that subsequent installments will have the same level of storytelling skill, wit & depth as the original, you will have higher expectations for the sequels.

Can the work still be effective after the initial surprise wears off? How, if so? Season 1 of Slow Horses was such a pleasant surprise that the show's return to face the same challenge was long overdue.

In response, the show has returned with some notable new twists. In this way, a compromise is reached. The tone of the show has significantly darkened since season 1, and much of the humor has been removed.

What made you roar with laughter in the first season is now more likely to elicit a poke-in-the-ribs kind of rueful chuckle when you're confronted with a situation so bad that the only response you can muster is laughter. In this article, we will read Slow Horses Season 2 Review.

Slow Horses Season 2 Story Synopsis

Jackson Lamb looks into the death of ex-serviceman Richard “Dickie” Bough, who was discharged before the fall of the Berlin Wall. On the bus where Dickie was killed, Lamb finds a phone he had hidden. The word “cicada” is spelled out on a note that's stuck to the phone.

Members of Slough House watch footage of places Dickie visited before his death & notice that he was trailing a bald, powerful man. When River brings up Dickie's name in front of his dad, David, he tells River about an old urban legend about a network of sleeper agents operating within British society.

Slow Horses Season 2 Review

We were able to debunk the rumor after looking into the situation. As the rumor about his abduction & torture by these agents spread, Dickie was eventually fired. A thorough examination of the station footage where Dickie went before his death led investigators to speculate that the man he was trailing may have dosed him with something.

When River tells Lamb what she's learned about the cicadas, he begins to wonder if the sleeper agents were real all along & have simply reawakened.

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Slow Horses Season 2 Review

Season 1 of Slow Horses was a pleasant surprise, so it's great to see the show back for another go at it. In response, the show has returned in a new format. This leads to a compromise. The first season's lighter moments have either been removed or significantly toned down.

What made you belly laugh in the first season is more likely to be a poke-you-in-the-ribs rueful chuckle in the second. Instead, the focus of Slow Horses is on its dramatic & action sequences. Substituting Jeremy Lovering for James Hawes as the film's director has been a big help.

The office melodrama of Slough House is rarely viewed or analyzed with the same intensity. In its place, the show frequently travels to different locations. Before the final two episodes of Season 1, the focus was primarily on happenings within the base, with the occasional foray into the outside world.

Slow Horses Season 2 Review

Spies working for Slough are now out in the real world & they have no desire to go back to sitting at a desk, especially not in that depressing place of business. When compared to previous seasons, where the characters spent more time out in the world, this season's narrative focuses inward.

Jackson Lamb reflects on how the mistakes made by Intelligence during the Cold War did not simply disappear with the fall of the Soviet Union. The proverbial chickens will come home to roost even in British intelligence. There are cases where more than 30 years are required.

It's thankfully not as sappy as that description makes it sound. Ultimately, the costs & benefits balance each other out. While the comedic elements may be missed by some, the interpersonal dynamics have been upgraded. The bad apples of the Slough had a delightfully cartoonish energy in the first season.

In this setting, however, they come across as more 3-dimensional, making it easier to empathize with them & more difficult to forget their suffering. This season, the show isn't going to pretend like the team is just full of incompetents. Now it goes into greater detail to refresh our memories of last year's material.

These spies are not bad actors. They are hardworking individuals who are made to take the blame for a leadership that is often avaricious, greedy, cowardly & short-sighted. They're paying for their own sins by being relegated to MI:5's lower division, but they're also bearing the burden of many others' mistakes.

However, Slow Horses doesn't simply absolve them. It goes into detail as to why each of them was so easily duped. Lamb is just as likely to overstep in the name of his Joes as he is to punish them harshly if they fail to meet his standards. River Cartwright is constantly pushing himself to be a hero in an effort to live up to the legacy of his master spy grandfather.

Due to his elation at regaining some of his former dignity, Min Harper becomes careless in his attempts to defend it from perceived slights. As a result, you shouldn't expect Slow Horses to simply provide the same satisfaction as the previous season.

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Instead, it offers sharper thorns, charms that add a healthy dose of suffering to the experience. Naturally, one cannot duplicate an effective surprise. Instead, the show tries to outdo itself by coming up with innovative methods of capturing viewers' interest.