Posted in: Apple, TV | Tagged: gary oldman, Slow Horses

Slow Horses: Hugo Weaving Returning as Series Baddie for Season Five

Hugo Weaving returns in the next season of Apple TV+'s Slow Horses to reprise his role as a villainous spy-turned-mercenary Frank Harkness.

To the surprise of no one who watched the latest season of Slow Horses on Apple TV+, Hugo Weaving will be returning to the hit series —by Apple TV+ standards—in the next season. Weaving was attending the International Film Festival of India in Goa and revealed that he will reprise his role as Frank Harkness in Season 5 of Slow Horses, returning to London in January for a two-and-a-half-month shoot.

"Each season generally is a book, but also each season departs a little bit from those books," Weaving said. "We're getting to the point with Slow Horses where the seasons are catching up to the amount of books that Mick Herron has written."

In season four of Slow Horses, Weaving made his series debut as Frank Harkness, one of the nastiest villains to show up in a spy story since any James Bond movie. Harkness was American, a former CIA intelligence officer gone seriously rogue and off the reservation when he went freelance and set up a company of former operatives that carried out off-the-books assassinations that they could disavow. He went one step further by breeding and indoctrinating his own sons into his own secret army.

One of the people he made a deal with was then Head of MI6 David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce), the former boss of both Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and Diana "Lady Di" Tavener (Kristin Scott-Thomas), and the grandfather of failed would-be superspy and reluctant slow horse River Cartwright (Jack Lowden). In season four, which adapted "London Rules," the fourth book in the Slow Horses series where David Cartwright's roosters come home to roost when Frank Harkness puts a hit on him and sends his sons to wreak havoc on London, and River struggles to keep his grandfather alive while Lamb has to keep his agents alive. Harkness made it out alive and unscathed by the end of the season and also returns in the next books. What we didn't get in season four was a confrontation scene between Harkness and Lamb, so the show missed the chance for a face-off between two powerhouse actors like Weaving and Oldman. Hopefully, the next season will remedy that.

Slow Horses is streaming on Apple TV+.

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