The Apple TV+ show Slow Horses has accomplished something incredibly difficult. At Season 4 of the series — starring Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas, Saskia Reeves, Jonathan Pryce, Christopher Chung, Rosalind Eleazar, Kadiff Kirwan, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Ruth Bradley, Hugo Weaving and James Callis — it’s still as gripping, thought-provoking and witty as ever.
One character that is really the connective tissue of Slough House is Reeves’ character Catherine Standish. As Season 4 proves, even if she attempts to quit, she’s an invaluable resource for the Slow Horses, and especially Jackson Lamb (Oldman).
“At the end of [Season 3] she quits and walks all the way back to her house, and I find it so funny and complicated that they can’t leave her alone,” Reeves told Yahoo Canada. “She gets a lot of attention, so I don’t think she expected that. So there’s a weird sort of, ‘Oh, they miss me.'”
Apple TV+
Watch Slow Horses on Apple TV+ with a 7-day free trial, then $12.99/month
$13 at Apple TV+
Catherine Standish and Jackson Lamb: ‘It’s all a chess game’
As we’ve seen so far in Season 4, Standish is particularly critical in trying calm David Cartwright (Pryce) down when he starts to get confused and agitated, while also being an essential ally for Lamb, even though he’s also happy to hurl an insult her way when he can.
Reeves highlighted that while Standish wants to be able to lie to Lamb, she just can’t.
“I realized the reason she’s not very good at it is not because she can’t lie, it’s because she can’t lie to Jackson Lamb, because he can see everything,” Reeves explained. “She knows how good he is and so there’s almost like, ‘Well there’s no point trying to lie, because he’s going to work it out anyway. But I’ll give it my best shot.'”
“It’s like he takes away her confidence because she knows he’s going to checkmate her at any moment … It’s all a chess game.”
Reeves added that Lamb is like a “beam of light” that you can’t escape.
“He sees things so clearly, you’re sort of exposed,” she said. “You’re literally caught in his spotlight.”
“I think Catherine still though manages to find the dark shadow places where she can throw a barbed comment in his direction, or do something that he didn’t expect, or stand up to him in a way that I don’t think he quite worked out would happen.”
‘I have friends of all ages who watch it’
Much of the success of Slow Horses is also attributed to the fact that the voices of each character, no matter how old they are, are all heard. Unlike many shows, older characters aren’t limited in their impact in Slow Horses, but rather they’re incredibly critical to the core of the story.
“It’s great, isn’t it?,” Reeves said. “You’ve got this beautiful balance with very experienced older characters and eager, vital younger characters. It’s a great mishmash of stuff.”
“I think that’s why the show is possibly getting so popular, because I have friends of all ages who watch it. … It’s a pleasure to know that.”
