Episode 1 of season 6 of Slow Horses gives it to us straight: this is going to be bleak. It isn’t just the colour scheme, the bright vibes coming only from the citrus paintjobs on Struan Loy and Jackson Lamb’s respective Honda Civics, 39 and 25 years old respectively. It isn’t just the roadkill in the first shot, mirrored by what nearly happens to River in the last shot. It’s the death of two former slow horses, contrasted with the ultimate (secret) establishment funeral. It’s the brutality of both the murders and the indifference of the new administration.

Struan hasn’t changed much since we saw him in series 1. He’s still relentlessly cheerful and in a world of his own. What are his karate kids going to care about muscle memory? (I wonder how Struan’s classes compare with the real karate classes that happen at the Forest Community Centre, which is below the North Circular in Walthamstow). Why would a cashier want to invest in his hare-brained scheme? And, of course, it turns out that karate isn’t going to save him.

Has power already completed the corruption of Diana Taverner? As recently as two episodes ago she had developed a relationship with Lamb that almost suggested that he was a confidant. Had she really sent the estate agent? Is she really behind the ‘order to expunge’? It isn’t clear. But you get the idea that she wants to keep the news of Struan’s murder from Lamb for no other reason than antipathy towards Flyte. And why was the Park not completely clear about the provenance of the money that they thought they had taken from Peter Judd?

During the tour of MI5, our ears prick up at the reference to a Russian-financed bot farm linked to nerve agents. We’d assume that Peter Judd and his new sidekick might be involved, but they seem to take pleasure from watching MI5’s intervention. Diana is actually pleasant to her aide, Ofili, who deploys Code Vulcan to get the boss away from the tour. Code Vulcan comes from the name of Ofili’s cat and although I love the idea I don’t think I’ll be able to replicate it. ‘Code Bonbon’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Kay lives on a river. Black Doves’ Eleanor has similar living arrangements, so has the riverboat home become for Big Streaming’s spy stories the 2020s equivalent of the 1990s’ romcom London mews house? More seriously, Struan and Kay’s deaths, when compared with the OB’s, show the random nature of Service outcomes. As the old saying goes, ‘hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue’. Lamb, who has seen more of his fair share of deaths both desperate and fake, has no time for it. But that is not to negate River’s loss.

There’s a huge amount that happens at the funeral, with interactions between Taverner and Judd, and then Taverner and Lamb that have huge consequences not least for Catherine and Flyte (that look at Flyte when Lamb mentions the ‘retired spooks grapevine’ doesn’t bode well). In Joe Country River’s mum does turn up at the funeral. But who’s that in the church next to Diana Taverner – could it be Mick Herron? Is he River’s mum? In many ways, he is.

River’s eulogy is of course as hilarious as Jackson thinks it is. ‘Cars, buses, trains, planes, but he – minibuses’. But he speaks only of the OB’s failures, whereas the OB retained the respect of the spook community.

But with River in pieces, Ho in some kind of post-Tara phase and Coe becoming more, shall we say, keen to take part, it isn’t clear that the horses are ready for what might come next. Especially since it seems that the assassins have Cartwright Junior next on their target list.

Episode 2, Daddy Issues, will be available on Wednesday, 23 September 2026, on Apple TV.