Posted in: Apple, TV | Tagged: Slow Horses

Slow Horses Creator & Showrunner Discuss Season 5 Focus, Emphasis

Slow Horses author Mick Herron and showrunner Will Smith on the show's evolution and how Season 5 "comments on contemporary British politics."

The new season of everyone's favourite new spy series, Slow Horses, is almost upon us, and original book author Mick Herron and series showrunner Will Smith have a lot to say about the series at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival at The Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate. "What I love about the books and what it enables you to do with the series is it can have slightly different emphases," Smith said. "Series 1 was kidnap plot, so it starts and it just rips. And series 2 was the Russian spies in the past being reactivated, and it delved into the past, so it had that different kind of energy and feel to it. Then 3 was just the scale of it, and the action which became that big set piece shoot-out at the end, which I absolutely love. And then 4 is the darkness of David's backstory and David's decline, and River coping with that, which was all fantastic."

In season 5 of Slow Horses, everyone is suspicious when resident tech nerd Roddy Ho has a glamorous new girlfriend. When a series of increasingly bizarre events occur across the city, it falls to the Slow Horses to work out how everything is connected. After all, Lamb knows that in the world of espionage, the London Rules – cover your back – always apply. The season is an adaptation of "London Rules", the fifth book in the series.

"It's great to see Chris Chung as he's grown and just owned that character," said Smith. "So that's been wonderful to watch, it's really exciting to be doing that," continued Smith. "And then putting Ho together with characters that might not be able to cope with him – there's real fun to that. The plot, as well, is, sadly, topical; it is the other side to that. It comments on contemporary British politics."

Smith said to Herron, "When you wrote it, I'm sure you thought, 'Oh, that's all going to go away.' But it feels very relevant."

To those people who have read "London Rules" and the next book "Bad Actors", which series six is based on, they would know the commentary on a more corrupt and less after UK in the wake of Brexit is all over the stories, since the recurring theme of every Slow Horses story is the self-inflicted wounds the UK constantly inflicts on itself, and how the forgotten, unappreciated "nobodies", ie the Slow Horses", are the ones to keep things from going completely pear-shaped and leaving the country (or at least, London) a smoking ruin.

Slow Horses season 5 premieres on 25th September 2025 on Apple TV+

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!