The slow horses of Apple TV’s Slow Horses are the rejects, screwups, and misfits of MI5. Nothing is really meant to happen in Slough House. The spies have all been assigned busy work to while away the rest of their careers as spies from behind a desk. But then, all of a sudden, these put-to-pasture agents are thrown into one intrigue after another, often involving matters of national security and international mystery, and the fate of their country ends up in their hands. Led by the ornery and paunchy Jackson Lamb, this band of rogues somehow always finds a way to save the day—of course, only after some car chases and high jinks that revel less in the careful and often quiet art of spycraft and than in the crashes and bangs of a Hollywood action film. As our critic Jorge Cotte writes in October’s Books & the Arts, the show’s maximalist action set pieces and minimalist intrigues are “emblematic of where drama has gone in the post-peak-TV era.” Slow Horses is a glossy show that aspires to be gritty, one full of quick-witted repartee and banter and that often avoid sophistication or philosophical introspection, a spy drama where politics is almost entirely absent, and questions of strategy are often merely about how to complete a mission. It is as watchable as the great late-aughts cable dramas that came to be known as prestige TV, but lacks a lot of their refinement and big ideas. It is the poster child for the “era of prestige popcorn TV.” “On this measure,” Cotte writes, “Slow Horses is a triumph. You can watch it with your roommates, your parents, or your grandkids….It’s sleek, but not stylish; it’s grimy, but in a cool, clean way. Beneath its fanfare of sharp elbows and dyspeptic discontent, Slow Horses intends to go down easy.” Read “The Ornery Intrigues of “Slow Horses””