'Slow Horses' Season 6 Ep 1 Review, Sharp Humor And High Stakes, But A Slow Burn Start

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After five acclaimed seasons, Apple TV+'s espionage hit, Slow Horses, returns sharper than ever. The premiere of the sixth season throws Slough House into chaos as the team is wiped from MI5 records and former agents start turning up dead.

While 'Diana Taverner' (Kristin Scott Thomas) adjusts to life as First Desk, 'Jackson Lamb' (Gary Oldman) forces his crew off the grid, and 'River Cartwright' (Jack Lowden) stumbles onto a ghost from his past. It is a brooding, darkly comic opener that sets the stage for a deadly new mission in motion.

Slough House goes dark as a new threat emerges

The sixth season of Slow Horses opens with a sharp shift in power at MI5. 'Diana Taverner' has finally taken over as First Desk, but the promotion brings little stability. Her attention is fixed on settling into the top role, which leaves little room for the problems brewing below.

At the same time, Slough House faces a strange crisis. The team has been erased from the system, and no one has received their pay. The glitch is treated as an administrative error, yet it signals something far more dangerous.

The danger becomes clear when former members of Slough House start dying. The first episode begins with the death of ex-Slow Horse ‘Struan Loy,’ found burnt inside a storage unit. The incident is dismissed as an accident, but 'Jackson Lamb' senses a pattern. When more names surface, he understands that someone is systematically targeting his people. His response is immediate and absolute. He pulls the current Slough House team off the grid.

‘Lamb’ divides the work with his usual blunt efficiency. 'Catherine Standish', 'Roddy Ho' and 'Shirley Dander' are sent to track down former colleagues 'Louisa Guy' and 'Moira Tregorian' and move them to a safe location. The decision underlines the central tension of the episode.

No one else at the Park seems to care that Slow Horses are disappearing from records or being killed. 'Emma Flyte' is the only senior figure to show concern, while the rest shrug off the warnings. That isolation is what makes the premiere effective. The team is truly alone, forced to survive by ‘Lamb’s’ self-styled Moscow rules.

The writing keeps the pacing tight and the tone balanced between bleak humor and sudden violence. The 45-minute runtime moves without wasted moments, setting up a larger conspiracy that appears to connect back to ‘Taverner’ herself.

‘River Cartwright’ finds an unlikely ally while on the run

While most of Slough House follows ‘Lamb’s’ order to disappear, 'River Cartwright' takes a different path. Still in the suit from his grandfather's funeral, he is at a low point after his promotion was taken back at the end of the previous season. He returns to his grandfather's house seeking quiet, only to find 'Sid Baker' hiding there. 

The return of 'Sid Baker,' presumed dead since the first season, is handled without excess. The episode does not pause for nostalgia, and instead throws the two characters straight into danger.

Two assassins, ‘Jim’ and ‘Jane,’ are hunting the Slow Horses. They are calm, methodical, and brutal in their approach, and their presence raises the threat level immediately. They attack ‘River’ and ‘Sid’ at the house, and the pair escapes only with the help of 'J.K. Coe,' the quiet and unpredictable resident of Slough House.

The chemistry between ‘River’ and ‘Sid’ feels natural even after years apart, and it gives the episode an emotional core amid the action. Parallel to this, the episode reintroduces 'Frank Harkness', ‘River’s’ father and a former CIA operative. His return adds a second layer of menace.

Rather than working in the shadows, 'Frank' moves openly against ‘Lamb’ by targeting ‘Reece Nesmith,’ a key witness under ‘Lamb’s’ protection. The face-off between ‘Lamb’ and ‘Harkness,’ staged in an ordinary fast food place, captures the show's strength. It is tense and serious, yet undercut by ‘Lamb’s’ familiar crudeness.

By the end of the first episode, the pieces are in place for a season that leans fully into its underdog premise. The Slow Horses are cut off, unprotected, and hunted, while the wider intelligence world looks away.

The first episode of Slow Horses Season 6 is out now on Apple TV+. The remaining six episodes are scheduled to premiere every week, starting from September 23, 2026.

PC: IMDb

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