What should you watch after Slow Horses?
If you loved Slow Horses, the obvious answer is another spy thriller. But that may not be the part you actually loved. Slow Horses is unusually warm underneath the espionage: sarcastic, highly competent people becoming a kind of found family while repeatedly making a mess of redemption.
What makes Slow Horses work?
Slow Horses looks like a dark spy thriller. The pleasure underneath is warmer than that.
- Competence under pressure. These people are highly capable, and the job still goes wrong.
- Dry British wit. The sarcasm is how they stay in the room with each other.
- Found family. A rejected crew becomes the people they belong to.
- Messy redemption. They try to make up for the past, and they keep making a mess of it.
- A surprisingly warm emotional tone. The espionage does not cancel the warmth out.
What to watch next
Three routes. Not another list of spy thrillers.
The Diplomat
Current
The warm mood and the sarcastic humour overlap, and so does the competence under pressure.
This is the strongest recognisable current route if the pleasure is clever people operating under pressure, rather than espionage itself.
Murderbot
Current adjacent
The same warm emotional tone, the same dry humour, competence under pressure, and a found family.
The surprise is the setting. Murderbot is science fiction. Much of the underlying viewing pleasure still travels with it.
Hustle
Hidden gem
The warm mood and the sarcastic humour again, British, and built on competence under pressure.
This is the older show someone may have missed: a highly capable misfit crew whose pleasure comes from competence, wit and belonging rather than spy mechanics.
This still is not your match.
Slow Horses may work for you for completely different reasons. Add the shows you love and let TVME discover what connects them.
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