Slow Horses review: The action spies that prove the next 007 must be a woman, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Slow Horses (Apple TV+)

Classification:

The murder of Lyn Dawson (Sky Crime)

Classification:

It could be Jane Bond, or Jemima, even Janine… but the next star to play Agent 007 will have to be a woman. If we leave it to men, the world is doomed.

Male spies are losers, according to the spy comedy-drama Slow Horses. You can barely trust them to cross the street, much less detect betrayal.

But every woman is born to be Bond: lightning reactions, ruthless wit, supercharged sexual desire. Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana, head of MI5, chews up a hapless subordinate: “I want you to keep walking until you get to the sea, and when you get there, she keeps walking with her mouth open.”

Cold agent Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar) picks up a suitor eager for sex in a bar, telling him to sit quietly until she’s ready to drag him to bed. The next morning, she kicks him out of her apartment for daring to raid his refrigerator: the jerk never guesses that’s where he keeps his stash of diamonds.

Later, he prevents a city hall worker from impounding a car by smashing his crane with a crowbar. The thug in the high-visibility jacket is so speechless in surprise that he’s afraid to even call the police.

And diminutive secret agent Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) slaps a smarmy colleague so hard that he doesn’t regain consciousness for three scenes.

The contrast with the boys could not be more extreme. Some are thugs and traffickers, others are lecherous perverts. But the rest are worse than that.

Jack Lowden plays River Cartwright, a man as wet as his name. He can’t even lower a box of files without the bottom falling out.

His boss is Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), a scruffy drunk whose idea of ​​personal hygiene is lathering himself up with Fairy Liquid in the office sink, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip.

Now in its third series and based on Mick Herron’s best-selling novels, its tone veers between action and slapstick and back again, so that every thrill is in danger of being undermined by cheap laughs.

In the initial double series of episodes, we see car chases, boat chases and fast-paced races up escalators or through underground complexes, but these can end at any moment when one spy bumps into another and both are sent flying.

It is saved from complete farce by an elegant description of London, as a dirty city where contacts pass secrets to their handlers on plastic chairs in East End laundromats, and killers pack their targets into cars under railway tunnels. .

There’s a strong flavor of The Ipcress File, although a Slow Horses version would probably have starred Marti Caine, not Michael.

The surfer’s paradise of Sydney’s northern beaches in Australia is a world away, in every sense, from grungy London.

They are also the scene of one of the world’s most scrutinized disappearances, thanks to the global success of a 2018 podcast called Teacher’s Pet.

That audio series led to the resumption of a murder search and, ultimately, the conviction of former teacher Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife, Lyn, whose body was never found.

The Murder of Lyn Dawson repeats history at a rapid pace, galloping through the twists and turns, and giving us little time to absorb the shocks that made listening to the podcast so addictive.

It also disguises the identity of the 16-year-old babysitter seduced by Dawson, an odd decision since her name was used throughout the podcast. For true crime enthusiasts, the clips from Dawson’s home video are interesting, but this new version seems pretty pointless.