TURKISH DELIGHT (SLOW HORSES, S3)

SLOW HORSES, S3

We know the drill by now.

Each season of 'Slow Horses' begins with a big, pulsating set piece.

But this time around it's not occurring in Blighty but in Istanbul where Sope Dirisu's head of security at the UK Embassy Sean Donovan is spying on Katherine Waterston's MI5 agent Alison Dunn.

She is suspected of trying to leak information that could be highly damaging to British intelligence.

The only problem is Sean and Alison are also lovers and when she discovers he is spying on her a cat and mouse game around Istanbul ensues as he tries to intercept a stolen document she is going to pass on to a mystery man.

Losing him during the chase at dusk, Sean eventually catches up with where she is at an empty football stadium, only to discover Alison has been thrown off the building.

A year later, Sean resurfaces in London at an AA meeting that Saskia Reeves' Slough House office administrator Catherine Standish attends regularly.

Posing as an alcoholic named John, he lets slip in a cafe the name of her boss, Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb and sensing her unease, kidnaps her.

Slough House's Slow Horses are puzzled the following day by Standish's unusual absence from work and soon, Rosalind Elizear's Louisa Guy is trying to trace her colleague's movements.

Meanwhile Aimee Ffion Edwards' Shirley Dander and Kadiff Kirwan's Marcus Longridge check out her flat to see if she's around.

When a photo is sent to Jack Lowden's River Cartwright's phone of Standish with a gun pointing at her head and demanding a rendezvous at the Barbican Bridge in London, the team are alarmed.

Waiting for River at the bridge is Freddie Fox's James 'Spider' Webb, who informs him that the kidnappers have threatened his family.

He also claims the kidnappers have demanded River infiltrates MI5's high security headquarters at the Park to retrieve a file about the Prime Minister.

River immediately springs into action, managing to breach the Park's security led by the hard as nails Dogs leader Chris Reilly's Nick Duffy.

Lamb, however, contacts him as soon as he realises River is being used in a false flag operation by a private security contractor Chieftain that Webb is now working for.

The purpose is to test MI5 security, with Donovan involved in the false operation.

Incandescent with rage, Duffy captures River and administers a severe beating for humiliating him and his security team during Chieftain's operation.

Securing River's release, Lamb sends him and Louisa to Chieftain's offices.

There Webb, who River blames for derailing his career and landing him in Slough House in the first place, gloats that once again he has bested him and made him look like a fool.

Unaware of the false flag operation, Marcus and Shirley fall foul of Lamb after breaking into Donovan's flat - only for the police to arrive and bust the latter for possessing drugs.

Lamb fires the duo.

Meanwhile Webb goes to see Donovan but when the rendezvous goes hideously wrong, it soon becomes clear the Istanbul Embassy official has another agenda.

Having given us two of the sharpest series of any streaming show around, showrunner Will Smith and his writing team keep the quality threshold very high in these six episodes 

Smith, Mark Denton and Johnny Stockwood deliver six perfectly crafted, really witty scripts that can hoodwink the audience in a blink of an eye and then keep them on the edge of their seats with stunning action sequences.

Episodes Five and Six, in particular, feature the most impressive small screen gun battle since Sky's farmhouse assault in 'Gangs of London'.

All six episodes are superbly directed by Saul Metzstein who proves very adept at effortlessly switching between action sequences and the moments of dark comedy that run throughout the show.

Oldman is, as you'd expect, a joy to observe as the slovenly, uncouth, disrespectful Slough House boss Jackson Lamb and he provides much of the laughs.

The Oscar winning actor's interplay with Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas as the ice cool Deputy Director General of MI5 Diana Taverner and the rest of the cast is possibly the best thing you'd see right now on the small screen.

Meanwhile Lowden continues to ooze action hero charisma as River, while Scott-Thomas is as effective as always as the ruthless intelligence MI5 operator who always looks after herself.

Elizear further develops Louisa as a smart member of the Slough House team who deserves much better.

Reeves proves equally resourceful, while Christopher Chung amuses as the obnoxious and egotistical Slough House hacker, Roddy Ho.

Kirwan and Edwards also amuse as their characters try to regain Lamb's favour and get back to Slough House.

Reilly is arguably the best he's ever been in the show as the thuggish Dogs leader, Duffy while Fox continues to shine as the really oily and terribly vindictive Webb.

Dirisu impresses too as Donovan while there are decent turns from Charlie Rowe and Eliot Salt as two of his accomplices, Sion Daniel Young as a quirky MI5 records keeper Douglas, Gavin Spokes as Chieftain boss Sly Monteith and Chris Coghill as Hobbs, another dim witted member of The Dogs.

As usual, season three of 'Slow Horses' revels in the mistakes of the Slough House team and how they are also able to outwit MI5 colleagues whose careers, unlike theirs, have not been consigned to the dustbin. 

Ultimately, though, it is the black humour that makes this the best show on Apple TV and the finest TV series since 'Succession'.

If you can't enjoy the sight of the smelly, rule breaking Lamb stinking out Monteith's luxury car to get what he wants, then you really need to work on your lack of humour.

Fart jokes may normally be considered puerile but using them as a torture weapon in a spy series is oddly a stroke of genius.

You wind some. They lose some.

(Season Three of 'Slow Horses' was made available for streaming on Apple TV+ between November 29-December 27, 2023)