Slow Horses

@Efour - just started watching it a month ago and wrote this

ianh said:
Had this recommended at work, watched the 1st two episodes of Season 1 last night and, whilst the story held my interest, I hated all the characters, everyone was just an utter **** which put me off watching the rest as who wants to spend an hour watching ****'s being ****'s to each other.

However, after chatting to some of the folks at work who promised me it'd get better I watched another episode tonight, mostly because of the story again.................then another, and another and then another until I'd finished off Season 1 and by the end I'd "got" it, I got what everyone at work had seen in this and its brilliant (with a big caveat - see spoiler).

So for anyone else whose thinking of giving this a go, just watch the first 3-4 episodes before making up your mind, see how that goes!

Caveat - I'm not sure its fair but now I've seen "it" I can't unsee "it" with both of these - it feels like the parts written as River and Standish were actually written for two other "better" A-List actors and, when the production couldn't get them (cost/timing etc) they had to pick look-a-likes instead. For me, River is absolutely in face, mannerisms, voice etc was 100% supposed to be played by Simon Pegg in his Mission Impossible phase, and Standish is the same but with Olivia Coleman playing her - and now I've seen that, I can't unsee both of those "better" actors playing the roles rather than the actors who they actually got instead, and that really hurts my immersion a lot!
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They really need to get someone in who has any clue at all about firearms or explosives though hah - any time those are involved it completely kills it for me.
 
Rroff said:
They really need to get someone in who has any clue at all about firearms or explosives though hah - any time those are involved it completely kills it for me.
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The same logic that applies to "oh but its' entirely different to the books" applies to the above. Unless you have read the books, or in this case have an interest/knowledge of firearms, those watching have no idea or even care about how accurate to real life things are. May as well talk about how unlikely it is a guy that is slammed headon by a taxi, just gets up and totally disappears within 30 secs without so much as a groan or drop of blood.

In fact the entire premise of the series is ridculous, a gather-up of grossly under-performing MI5 members who consistently outperform the proper MI5 agents. One assumes there are people who are employed in MI5 berating how unrealisticly the agency is protrayed. For the rest of us, it's great entertainment.
 
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tangey said:
The same logic that applies to "oh but its' entirely different to the books" applies to the above. Unless you have read the books, or in this case have an interest/knowledge of firearms, those watching have no idea or even care about how accurate to real life things are. May as well talk about how unlikely it is a guy that is slammed headon by a taxi, just gets up and totally disappears within 30 secs without so much as a groan or drop of blood.

In fact the entire premise of the series is ridculous, a gather-up of grossly under-performing MI5 members who consistently outperform the proper MI5 agents. One assumes there are people who are employed in MI5 berating how unrealisticly the agency is protrayed. For the rest of us, it's great entertainment.
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Most of them ended up at Slough House due to agendas and/or to cover up others failures rather than ability so outperforming proper MI5 agents isn't so unrealistic. Though in the real world they'd be doing grunt work surveillance rather than collected up at "Slough House" (and the others were pretty useless).
 
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A lot of the "stunt" people show good weapons training which seems to be the norm, but the main cast is understandably wishy washy. I thought it looked especially hard for the actress playing Louisa whose IRL mishaped hands really struggled with some of the weapons stuff in the S3 finale and made a bit of a mockery of some of her lines when she wouldn't give River a pistol etc.
 
Finished it last night, was enjoyable and better than season 3, however
the actions scenes are not done well at all. The car ambush was just stupid, as was the grenade in the hoodie scene
I thought Jonathan Pryce was superb in that role, and as my wife is dealing with her grandad recently diagnosed with dementia and being put into a home, the scene at the end was quite moving.
 
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Just watching season 3 and thank god...

Thank god they killed off Spider. I just never understood why he was so over the top. It made no sense. Made no sense in the world they are in and made no sense that he kept profiting from being an obnoxious ****.
 
Season 4 was much better than 3 - thankfully. Just wish each season was a bit longer. Like The Diplomat it could do with a couple more episodes.
 
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