Much like an expensive gadget you never get much use from, Apple has ploughed billions into its streaming service, Apple TV+, without yet arriving within tweeting distance of a viral hit.
The closest it has come is the insufferable Ted Lasso, a psychotically cuddly comedy about soccer aimed at and seemingly made by people who have never attended a match in their lives.
The second closest is the rumpled espionage dramedy Slow Horses (Apple TV+, Wednesday), which has received admiring reviews – mainly from the UK, it must be said – for portraying the operatives at MI5 as relatable weirdos rather than gimlet-eyed instruments of British foreign policy.
Something is going on here. Every country likes to hold up a mirror and see something that it likes about itself in the reflection. It surely says a lot about the Britain in the 21st century that it would rather be represented by wisecracking underdogs than by a mercurial womaniser such as James Bond. Dour, dumpy, depressed: is this the broken Britain of spy dramas?
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The other question is whether it’s worth the acclaim. Sort of – though the series’ charms are not immediately obvious as it returns for a fifth season. The major obstacle is Gary Oldman. He plays a rude slob named Jackson Lamb, whom the show insists we find completely charming.
He’s actually just a rude slob – and a bit of a boss from hell, given that he is in charge of a team of spooks at MI5’s Slough House, a dumping ground for underperforming agents.
The stewing Lamb aside, Slow Horses reels you in with an enjoyably crunchy plot that owes a lot to the master of ennui and espionage, John le Carré. It begins in a grim corner of London, as a progressive mayor from a southeast Asian background seeks re-election over a red-faced far-right headbanger.
So far so depressingly true to life. But things take a turn for the mildly fantastical when a crazed gunman goes on a shooting spree – with a campaigner for the mayor among his victims. Meanwhile, back at Slough House, the team’s in-house hacker, Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), has seemingly been targeted for elimination.
But why? That is one of the mysteries confronting Lamb and his dashing sidekick River Cartwright (Jack Lowden – who is actually in the conversation as the next Bond). Alas, every step of the way they find obstacles laid in their path by their spiky boss, Kristin Scott Thomas – once again impersonating Theresa May.
Slow Horses excels at capturing the grey vastness of modern London, and the plot is packed to bursting, but it can’t decide whether it wants to be hilarious or profound, and the humour comes across as trying too hard.
The show’s fast-expanding fan base will tell you it’s the best thing on TV, but newcomers will find Slow Horses less hot to trot than a bleak black sheep that ambles at its often wayward pace.
