Having avoided shouldering the blame for a false flag operation that went badly wrong in the show's inaugural season, Apple TV's 'Slow Horses' are back for more adventures.
However this time it isn't the far right the gang of MI5 screw ups in Slough House have to worry about.
Season Two finds Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb and his gang of MI5 rejects encountering dodgy Russians after the suspicious death of a former disgraced comrade, Phil Davis' Richard Bough.
The victim dies while following a man who is acting suspiciously outside his shop.
In fact, the incident is of sufficient concern to Lamb that he combs video footage of Bough's last movements and even searches the bus he made his final journey in.
There Lamb finds Bough's mobile with a message 'Cicada' on it, prompting him to get Jack Lowden's River Cartwright and the rest of the team to dig deeper.
Independent of Lamb's operation, two of the team Dustin Demri-Burns' Min Harper and Rosalind Eleazar's Louisa Guy are approached by Freddie Fox's weasely but ambitious MI5 agent James 'Spider' Webb to carry out work for him, liaising with the security team of a UK based oligarch and defector, Ivor Nevsky.
Pulling this off could boost Spider's career and he gleefully tells the agency's Deputy Director, Kristin Scott Thomas' Diana Taverner that the opening of a back channel via Alec Uttgof's go-between Arkady Pashkin with a potential future Russian leader might be useful for the British Government.
Min and Louisa go about their business with great zeal with Pashkin's security team Zachary Baharov's Piotr Volodin and Yerden Telemissov's Kyril Asimov, helping prepare for the meeting.
All seems to be going well until the Russian duo lie about where they're staying, arousing Louisa and Nina's suspicions about their motives.
Lamb, meanwhile, continues his investigations into Bough's death, meeting with Rade Serbedzias's Nikolai Katinsky, a Cold War deflector from the KGB who claims he had heard of the Cicada program in Berlin and of a plan for it to continue long after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Katinsky's description of a man called Popov, who devised Cicada, matches that of Marek Vasut's Andrei Chernitsky who Lamb believes killed Bough.
River gleans from conversations with his grandfather, Jonathan Pryce's MI5 grandee David Cartwright that the cicada program was a plan to embed Russian sleeper agents in British society.
Armed with this knowledge, River informs Lamb he is going to The Cotswolds to find out more about the program where the man who killed Bough went.
Lamb leans on Taverner to approve undercover ID for River.
However she is preoccupied with Samuel West's MP Peter Judd's promotion to Home Secretary.
A fiercely ambitious Conservative minister, Judd is plotting a path to Downing Street and demands that she works with him in managing an anti-capitalist protest on the streets of London.
While staying in Upshott in The Cotswolds under the guise of a Times travel writer researching an article on village life, River comes across Tamsin Toploski's light aircraft pilot Kelly Tropper whose father Adrian Rawlins' Duncan and mother, Catherine McCormack's Alex own the pub he is staying in.
As the gets to know the Troppers, River is struck by Duncan's furtive behaviour and believes he may be the link man for Popov/Chernitsky.
But is his hunch correct?
As with Season One, the second season of 'Slow Horses' revels in the tensions between MI5 headquarters and their rejects in Slough House who seem to be a lot better at smelling a rat than their colleagues.
As a consequence, Lamb still exhibits a healthy disdain for his superiors but, then again, he adopts the same approach to everyone he comes across and isn't afraid to show it.
As River diligently goes about his business, not only are Slough House battling MI5 colleagues, they discover not everything about their various assignments are that straightforward.
With episodes penned once more by showrunner Will Smith, Morwenna Banks, Mark Denton and Jonny Stockwood, Series Two remains as sharply written and darkly comic as before.
In stark contrast to shows like 'Line of Duty,' 'Bodyguard' and 'Vigil,' 'Slow Horses' takes time to develop its plots and doesn't run around like a demented chimp demanding your attention.
As a result, when its big plot developments come, they feel really rewarding.
As for its cast, Oldman, Lowden and Scott Thomas remain ace cards but Eleazar and Demri-Burns also really come into their own.
Lamb remains a wonderful creation, with his cannot give a monkeys attitude to his colleagues, his disregard for formal niceties and good health and his alarming personal hygiene.
River is the perfect foil for him. A wronged agent full of honour, he is as intelligent as Lamb and much more earnest.
Christopher Chung is wonderfully cocky as Slough House's arrogant computer hacker Roddy Ho, while Saskia Reeves is good value as the office administrator Catherine Standish whose own back story bleeds into events.
Scott Thomas delights as Tavernier who doesn't hide her disdain for the Slough House staff but also knows how to negotiate her way out of a tight corner.
West remains terrifically arrogant and Machiavellian as Judd and the same is true of Fox.
Pryce relishes his patrician role as River's legendary MI5 grandfather while Toploski, Rawlins and McCormack are excellent as a rural family who may not be allowed what they seem.
Uttgof, Serbedzias, Vasut, Baharov and Telemissov deliver exactly what the show requires of them as villains and heavies.
Superbly directed by Jeremy Lovering, Series Two is as thrilling and witty as its predecessor.
Springing surprises and delivering regular laughs, jeep this standard up and we could well have a TV classic on our hands.
(Series Two of 'Slow Horses' was made available for streaming on Apple TV between December 2-30, 2022)
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