"Slow Horses" returned for a sixth season on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, with the spy drama's disgraced MI5 rejects discovering they have been quietly erased from the agency's records after their paychecks stop arriving. The season marks the first time the show has drawn its story from more than one Mick Herron novel, weaving together material from "Joe Country" and "Slough House."
The six-episode season is releasing weekly, with new installments through October 21. Gary Oldman returns as the slovenly, foul-mouthed Jackson Lamb, alongside Jack Lowden as River Cartwright and Kristin Scott Thomas as MI5's Diana Taverner. Olivia Cooke is back as Sid Baker, whose reappearance after presumed death has loomed over the show's recent seasons, and Hugo Weaving joins the cast as Frank Harkness, with Kyle Soller and MyAnna Buring playing a pair of assassins whose motives drive much of the season's tension.
Old team, new erasures
The premise pushes the show's ensemble of MI5's "slow horses" — agents banished to a dead-end department for career-ending mistakes — into more existential territory than usual: rather than merely being sidelined, they are being written out of the system altogether, with former colleagues turning up dead as the season progresses. Critics who previewed the season have generally described it as a turning point for a series that has spent five prior seasons building out its bleak, comic take on the spy genre.
The biggest turning point for Apple TV's longest-running spy thriller.
Carly Lane, Collider
Other early reviews echoed that reception, with critics for outlets including Tom's Guide and ScreenRant naming it among the best television of the year so far and pointing to a faster pace and higher body count than previous seasons.
What happens next
Apple has already confirmed a seventh season, continuing a production pattern that has let the streamer release a new run of "Slow Horses" roughly every year since its 2022 debut — a rarity in an industry where prestige dramas often go two or three years between seasons. Based on Herron's "Slough House" novel series, the show has become one of Apple TV+'s most consistent critical performers, with award nominations in recent years from the Emmys and BAFTA. The current season's episodes will roll out weekly rather than all at once, keeping the show in the weekly conversation through late October.
