“Slow Horses” is another story of a spy in need of redemption, but writer Will Smith (no, not that one) never takes his concept too pretentiously, allowing for scenes that almost approach workplace comedy among these outcasts, some of whom are at Slough House just because of an understandable mistake. It turns out the surveillance is tied to the kidnapping of a British Muslim young man, whom a fringe group is threatening to behead on national television. Why are they going through the trash of a famous white supremacist? When evidence needs to be returned to his former allies at MI5, including leader Diana Taverner ( Kristin Scott Thomas), Cartwright pushes his way into the investigation, basically dragging the whole team with him, which includes characters played by Olivia Cooke, Rosalind Eleazar, and Dustin Demri-Burns. River resents being there too, and so he leaps when he suspects that their latest grudge work might be something more. The ‘Slow Horses’ are led by Jackson Lamb (a fantastic Gary Oldman), a curmudgeon who makes his disdain for his current assignment known on a daily basis, telling his team that they’re basically paper-pushing rejects and he hates everything about them. As if Slough House wasn’t a demeaning enough nickname for this band of outcasts, they get a a secondary nickname based on it that gives the show its title. It all goes very wrong, and Cartwright, despite having a legacy in the spy business thanks to his famous grandfather David ( Jonathan Pryce), is shuffled off to a place called Slough House, which isn’t in Slough but is far enough away from the pulse of the British spy game that it might as well be. Based on the 2010 novel of the same name by Mick Herron, “Slow Horses” opens with an intense action scene in which an MI5 agent named River Cartwright (the great Jack Lowden of “ Dunkirk” and the upcoming “Benediction”) is trying to apprehend a potential bombing suspect at Heathrow Airport.

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