In the ripe purgatory of MI5 misfits known as Slough House, Catherine Standish is such a foundational piece that it seems as if the place would literally collapse into a sinkhole without her. The first time she appears in this third season, Catherine is chasing after River about a filing assignment, demanding that he do the job right, even though the files are “Ringo level,” which in the Beatles-inspired nomenclature of the agency means they’re of the lowest level of importance. (Poor Ringo. Always underrated.) “Catherine,” River snaps, “This is the equivalent of filling a storage unit full of crap for your kids to sort through once you’ve died.” But it’s important to her that Slough House maintain a level of professionalism, even if the job is an obvious sign of how little respect they receive from the institution.
To his eventual regret, River reacts poorly to Catherine’s fastidiousness, calling her a “martyr” for giving this shit work more attention than it deserves — which, of course, is the first sign that these seemingly unimportant files will contain a key piece of intelligence, not unlike the diamond tucked into a pint of Louisa’s ice cream. That’s a metaphor for the show itself: This office full of Ringos has a habit of finding itself at the center of premium spy work. Yet Catherine’s abduction throws the members of Slough House notably off-center. Without her around to hold the place together, the rest of the staff seem particularly vulnerable. They rely on her as a steadying force, but now she’s gone. Jackson seems to know immediately when she doesn’t show up to work on time. That never happens.
The new season of Slow Horses feels like slipping into one of Jackson’s rumpled shirts, familiar yet extremely comfortable. When Jackson goes to the doctor for his regular check-in, there is neither an effort toward improvement nor an acknowledgment that anything is amiss. As he goes, so goes the show. His seemingly self-destructive habits, such as his frequent beak-wetting (“How’s the drinking?” “Fine, thanks.”) and his smoking (he’s 27 minutes into quitting), haven’t killed him, and his bloodwork is surprisingly steady. He will die eventually, but not today, and probably not the following year, either. And when he does go, he predicts that “dodgy vindaloo and some steep steps” will finish him off. “Can’t think of a better way to go,” he says.
The source of the season’s intrigue is the pre–title sequence in Istanbul, where we witness a postcoital scene between Alison (Katherine Waterston) and Sean (Sope Dirisu). As Alison gets up from bed to finish up her homemade hummus — her lover rightly suspects there’s something off about anyone making hummus at home in Istanbul — Sean none too subtly pokes around her desk and gets caught immediately. He’s looking for a sensitive file labeled “Footprint” that his superiors think she’s about to leak, and the two of them have a fascinating exchange about it. Yes, it’s a terrible betrayal for Sean to rifle through her things after they shared intimacies, but he thinks she should understand that he had to do it. Spies have to do spy stuff, regardless of what happens between the sheets.
It turns out that Sean is correct about Alison’s plans with the file, which she’d buried deep in a bowl of un-mashed chickpeas. He follows her on a long day-to-night chase sequence through Istanbul to a drop-off meeting at an emptied-out stadium, but the drop did not go as planned for Alison. She handed Footprint over to her connection, urging him to “get it out there into the world,” but Sean finds her dead, suggesting a fate for the file that she never intended. Though the timeline shifts to “One Year Later” after the opening credits, we’re sure to see more from Alison in future episodes, given that an actress of Waterston’s caliber plays her. It seems reasonably safe to assume that Alison was a conscientious spy and her efforts to leak the file were a form of whistleblowing.
So what in the world does this have to do with Catherine and Slough House one year later? Why does Sean go through the trouble of infiltrating an AA meeting to get close to Catherine and orchestrate such a sophisticated kidnapping operation? These are questions that will propel the season forward, but “Strange Games” is more about swiftly patching together the Slough House team again and setting the table for revelations to come. The John/Paul/Ringo filings look to be more important than merely establishing Catherine’s character in the early going since Diana Taverner is whisked away unexpectedly to a secret filing facility that she had created out of a decommissioned war bunker for government elites. There’s also the curious purloined diamond in Louisa’s freezer, which she nearly lost to another in a series of random lays she’s brought in since losing Min Harper last season.
But really, Slow Horses spends this first 45 minutes luxuriating in that old, rumpled shirt, easing confidently into another twisty story around characters who we know well enough that long introductions aren’t necessary. By now, they’re all bitter, cynical, hard-drinking cranks like their boss Jackson, whose imprint on them lingers like one of his infamous farts. The funny thing about Slough House is that it seems like there’s no way back from it, no matter how well an agent performs. The best they can do is take their cues from Catherine and do the job right, if only for their own sense of dignity.
Shots
• Great to see an actress of Waterston’s caliber appear on the show. She was a revelation in a breakthrough role as a femme fatale of sorts in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice and has been reliably good ever since in films including Steve Jobs, Alien: Covenant, Mid90s, and Babylon.
• Even in a busy first episode, plenty of time is devoted to Jackson’s notoriously terrible hygiene and eating habits. He’s seen ordering enough sauce at a fast-food joint to keep from “tasting the meat,” and he isn’t alarmed about Catherine’s absence until he runs out of soap and dishwashing liquid for his sink bath and his cries for her help go unheard.
• Important line from Sean to Catherine, given what might be revealed in that Footprint file: “Secrets will always come out. There will always be a reckoning.”
• Ho’s reputation as the office creep has expanded. He’s even changed his hair color in a sad bid for Louisa’s attention. Asked to speculate about what they might find in Ho’s apartment, Shirley says, “Human skulls, stolen underwear, pictures of Louisa with her eyes cut out.”
