- River Cartwright is ousted from MI5 and finds himself in a place worse than purgatory: Slough House, dumping ground for failed spies.
- After a botched and publicly embarrassing training mission, British MI5 agent River Cartwright is exiled to Slough House, an administrative purgatory for service rejects. Known as slow horses, Cartwright and his fellow employees must endure dull, paper pushing tasks and their miserable boss, Jackson Lamb, who expects them to quit out of boredom and frustration. Life in Slough House is defined by drudgery until the slow horses become entangled in a dangerous gambit by Regent's Park.
- MI5 agent River Cartwright messes up a major anti-terrorism training exercise to the extent that if it had been an actual attack several hundred people would be dead or injured. He is banished to Slough House, the department where all disgraced MI5 officers are sent. Running the department is Jackson Lamb who, while hardly the epitome of an MI5 officer himself, runs a tight ship and has his staff doing all manner of meaningless tasks. He is trying to get them to quit.—grantss
- The series follows Mick Heron's first book (in the great Slough House series). Slow Horses begins with: "how River Cartwright slipped off the fast track and joined the slow horses", a failure that seems to have had truly catastrophic consequences. To begin we are with River Cartwright, played by Jack Lowden. He's at a London Airport (not a railway station as written), earpiece in, keeping an eye on a suspect. James 'Spider' Webb, is the one in his ear, guiding him, feeding him intel as well as giving orders which are coming from Diana Taverner (know as Lady Di) played by Kristin Scott Thomas). They're telling him to 'hold position', don't go in, they wait and wait and then tell him to go. By this time the suspect has begun to make his way onto the plane so River gives chase bringing him down prior to boarding, only to find that this isn't the man. River is asked to confirm the sighting of the suspect, he does so, saying, "blue shirt, white t-shirt", Spider is confused, he says it's the other way round...They get back on CCTV and find the real suspect, making his way towards the train station at the airport. River gives chase, again, barging people out of the way, roughly in some cases. He reaches the true suspect but is too late, the man detonates his back-pack. (River is, in fact, convinced that the slip-up wasn't really his, and that he was actually set up -- a lingering question that continues to play a role in the story.)
Meet Jackson Lamb, Gary Oldman (" Darkest Hour", " Killers Anonymous "), head of the Slough House arm of MI5. This is where Spooks who have majorly f*cked up in their careers end up, with little to no hope of ever getting out. Lamb doesn't seem to care anymore, he's obviously intelligent, obviously knew his stuff, maybe still does, but he's been left to rot looking after these f*ck ups, maybe even himself. River is now shifting through rubbish on the office floor, we don't know how long has passed, but we do learn that it was a training exercise, though had it been real it would have resulted in hundreds dead, more injured and millions in damage. Catherine Standish (played by Saskia Reeves), Lamb's assistant, asks him what on Earth he's looking for, but he doesn't know, just doing as he's told. Lamb later says he's looking for the remnants of a once promising career. Another agent from Slough House, Sid Baker (played by Olivia Cooke) is sitting in a cafe. She distracts a reporter, Robert Hobden (Played by Paul Hilton), and swipes the contents of his laptop. Taverner wants Sid to bring the laptop with the contents of the USB stick on to her. But it ends up being River, who has a run-in with Spider whom he blames for him now being in Slough House. On the way to HQ, Regents Park, River opens the Flashbox and copies the files onto his own USB. There's nothing on the USB, just PI to many decimal places. River goes to see his grandfather David Cartwright (Played by Jonathan Pryce, the one who pulled some strings to keep him in MI5, to ask him about the journalist. He doesn't know much, but it seems like he knows more. In fact, things fortunately did not go as spectacularly wrong as the first impression suggests -- but River did slip up badly, and it's more than enough to pretty much destroy his career. River comes with a secret service pedigree, raised by a grandfather, David Cartwright, 'the O.B.', who was clearly an old hand in the game. (Possibly, too, he still exerted enough influence that River wasn't simply fired for his mistake.) In Leeds a standup comedian is telling edgy jokes, mainly about religion, he's white but it's his friend who is writing the jokes, he tells his friend he'll confuse people by laughing at the muslim jokes. He's being watched though, but is it the comedian or the friend?
This is a fabulous introduction to Slow Horses, you are left in no doubt that everyone in that office has a back story, something has gone wrong in their lives and that's lead them to be in this decrepit sh*t hole of an office.
Some seem to just get on with it, not be that bothered by it and try to make the best of it. River doesn't seem like one of those, he desperately wants to be back in the action and he's going to do whatever he can to make it happen.
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