“Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers (Slough House Book #3)
If you’re into John le Carré novels but always felt they could use a little dark, gallows humor to make it light, Mick Herron’s Slough House series is for you.
Slow Horses – Apple TV+
I discovered Herron though the adaptation of his series, Slow Horses on AppleTV. A series that, along with Shrinking, is worth getting the subscription. AppleTV is the new HBO when it comes to prestige programming. (I swear I didn’t get paid to write that either).
While I’m on the subject of giving platitudes, I read the first Slough House book after having watched the first season and I was still very invested and entertained, even though I knew where it was going. Mick Herron’s writing is very, very funny and also super exciting.
Led by Gary Oldman, who plays Jackson Lamb, an old school spook having to navigate “London rules” after surviving the “Moscow Rules” of the Cold War. This series is equally exciting and hilarious.
It’s really well done, the acting is excellent, and they’ve aired five seasons so you have a good binge ahead of you if you haven’t seen it.
The Americans (FX, 2013–2018):
Spiritual cousins to Slow Horses, The Americans was criminally underrated and never had the cultural moment it deserved during its run. Granted, Matthew Rhys did win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, but still it should have had more clout.
Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys star as a seemingly perfect American married couple who are secretly KGB agents at the height of the Cold War. Paranoia and conspiracy give way to a profound deconstruction of the Reagan-era nuclear family — they’re forced to hide their true nationality from their two children, born and raised in America.
The Americans is dark and tragic, but it didn’t have a weak season or even episode during its entire run. So many shows now feel like they should have been a tight 90-120 minute movie and instead they’re 10, 1-hour episodes where the middle episodes are just treading water, this is balls to the wall for the entire run. And they stick the landing with that final episode very well.
Ponies (Peacock)
God, I hope this show gets picked up for another season. I absolutely loved this show. Created by David Iserson (Mr. Robot) and Susanna Fogel (The Flight Attendant). Ponies is set in 1977 Moscow. It follows two American Embassy “secretaries” — Bea (Emilia Clarke) and Twila (Haley Lu Richardson) — whose husbands are killed during a clandestine CIA mission. They pitch themselves to the CIA as operatives — trading their cooperation for answers about how their husbands died.
Where The Americans is the tragedy — the most serious, the most devastating. Slow Horses is the cynical procedural — bureaucratic rot. Ponies is the dark comedy — two women in 1977 Moscow figuring it out as they go. Together they cover almost every register the genre has. It’s a really fun ride.
Fun fact, they shot Ponies in the 3:2 aspect ratio to give it a retro vibe. Filming took place in Budapest as a stand-in for Moscow.