Slow Horses (TV Series) Bad Tradecraft (2022) User Reviews

If you'd meant to kill him, he'd still be alive!

[bosporan · 9/10 · 8 April 2022]

An intriguing opening, straight into the action clearing up some questions and immediately asking more. Gary Oldman (Lamb) shines forth this week, with his acerbic wit and humour, following a subdued start - some fabulous one-liners.

We get to understand a little of Lamb's relationship to queen-bee Diana (Kristin Scott Thomas) and I look forward to discovering more. A gruesome (yet predictable) ending keeps up the 'page turnability' of this series.

Did you mean to kill him????

[moviesfilmsreviewsinc · 10/10 · 1 May 2022]

Slow Horses covers its USP in the opening minutes, when two drunk employees stumble into the Slough House office and are met by a masked criminal. The bumbling drunks supply the British humour and the creeping thief brings the suspense. This highly entertaining spy thriller expertly delivers on both fronts throughout the first half of the season. Written by Will Smith (no not that one) from a Mick Herron novel, this is hilariously droll and deftly tense in equal amounts. "Bad Tradecraft" continues the story of a gang of failed secret agents trying to find a kidnapped student before it's too late. The masked burglar ends up being one of their own, Jed Moody. Jackson Lamb and River Cartwright return from the hospital in a filthy, yellow banger (that's British slang for car) just in time to find the two drunks idling around the body. Gary Oldman is a sarcastic firecracker, providing an assault of one-liners as he searches the body, whilst roasting the drunk lovebirds (Min and Louisa). Slow Horses keeps doling out the twists in fine fashion, don't worry there are plenty more to come. Jackson finds two mobile phones on the corpse, one of which leads directly to the Head of Operations herself, Diana Taverner. The two meet by an eerie canal to discuss the mayhem. This intense scene involves two of Britain's most esteemed thespians: Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas playing mind games on one another, trying to eke out the truth. There's less action in this episode, but with sequences like this you don't need explosions to make a thrilling piece of TV. The two criminal masterminds discuss the situation, each revealing fractions of information, to formulate a fair agreement. Diana has orchestrated the kidnapping and needs Jackson to oversee the safe return of the student. As Jackson quips, this false flag operation is devilishly close to falling apart in monumental style. He rallies the troops, affectionately referring to them as 'my losers' and prepares to meet with the nationalist terrorists in a tense finale.

Loved the casual racism

[gordonjackson-58694 · 3/10 · 16 August 2022]

Can't beat the hilarious casual racisim of characters (Louisa) doing a Scottish accent to mock Struan. I look forward to her pretending to be a Pakistani, a Chinaman and a Jamaican in future episodes. Maybe she can do a little head nod thing when her character mocks an Indian. That'll be fine won't it? The writer needs to take a look at himself.

Gary Oldman is fantastic but many other parts were just bad.

[austinlowell2 · 10 July 2022]

Without spoiling it for everyone, when a certain character yells "He should stand trial!" In episode 6 is when I had to turn it off. So much cheese in this show and bad writing and bad directing. Oldman is so good that he makes it watchable, but otherwise it feels like it's made by 15 year olds.