Someone is hunting and killing Slow Horses. Not just current Slow Horses either, but anyone who’s ever worked there. Season 6 of Apple TV’s excellent espionage thriller, Slow Horses , opens with a face we haven’t seen since Season 1: Struan Loy (Paul Higgins) who was booted from Slough House after giving up his colleagues to the Park.

Loy has been living a quieter life after his departure from MI5’s misfit brigade. He teaches martial arts to kids. He has awkward conversations with strangers. He seems just as lonely as before, though now he has some kind of harebrained scheme involving shipping containers as tiny homes.

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Murder Was The Case That They Gave Me

This is where he meets his killers: Jim (Kyle Soller, who played Syril Karn in Andor ) and Jane (MyAnna Buring, who played the sorceress Tissaia de Vries in The Witcher ). This pair of nonchalant assassins appear to be hired hitmen, contract killers. They have a drink with Loy in his shipping container model home and then they pour the booze on the ground, knock him to the floor and light the place on fire. Jane places a board across the door so Loy can’t escape and he burns to death screaming.

It’s a grim start to the new season, and while Struan Loy was far from the brightest, you still feel awful for the guy. What a way to go. The killers later find another ex-Slough House employee (though it’s a woman we’ve never met) and bonk her over the head while she’s on the patio of her little river house. They dump her in the water and push her down with a long pole until she drowns, all very casual like. It’s odd that the two murders took place in non-conventional domiciles, though this is clearly not why they’re on this killing spree.

The why is the biggest of several mysteries. As Jim and Jane stroll away from the riverboat house, they pick a name from their list. We know who their next target is . . . .

No, not Sid (Olivia Cooke, who has been off filming House of the Dragon ). Sid is back this season, and I suspect her return will have something to do with these two assassins and whoever is paying them to take out Slow Horses, but she doesn’t come back in the Season 6 premiere. We’ll just have to wait and see, though it is a comfort to know she wasn’t killed in Season 1. I didn’t think she was, naturally; after all, we didn’t see a body.

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But we do know the next target. “Who would name their child River?” Jane asks, shaking her head as they walk casually away from the drowned woman. River (Jack Lowden) will be a far, far slippier target than Struan Loy, however. Then again, he’s not at his best at the moment. Grief and frustration have clouded his judgment, making him a more vulnerable target than usual. And by the end of the episode, we discover yet another distraction that’s bound to leave him spinning.

The hit jobs aren’t the only grim tidings we encounter at the start of Season 6. David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce), River’s grandfather, former First Desk at MI5 and the “Old Bastard” according to Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) has died. River is in a particularly bristly mood when he meets with current First Desk, Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas). At last Taverner is at the top, having languished as Second Desk for years under leaders she could run circles around.

Beyond the funeral and the murders, something else is amiss, and it’s hard to say if Taverner is behind it or if it ties into whoever is offing Slow Horses. Somehow, Slough House has been scrubbed from MI5’s records. Paychecks have stopped arriving. Nobody seems to know why and when Catherine (Saskia Reeves) goes to the Park to find out, Moira Tregorian (Joanna Scanlan) – who did a brief stint as secretary at Slough House – says it’s not a mistake, but a directive from the very top. When Lamb brings this up with Taverner at Cartwright’s funeral, however, she seems taken off guard. In the ensuing spat, she tells him that she’s “not Charles Partner. You won’t have to shoot me!”

This is news to Catherine who, if I recall correctly, knew that her old boss was a double agent but didn’t know that Lamb took him off the board (Lamb and Cartwright, that is).

A Gloomy Beginning To Season 6

While there were some very funny bits in tonight’s Season 6 premiere, the vibe overall is one of gloom. When it’s not raining, the world is overcast. There is a distinct blue-green tinge filter over everything that I don’t recall from previous seasons, which is either a creative choice for the show’s color-grading going forward, or an intentional device to cast a pall over everything and set the mood. There’s a distinct blue-green cast over much of the episode that I don’t remember being nearly so pronounced in previous seasons.

The episode wasn’t entirely bleak, however.

The funniest moment was when Coe (Tom Brooke) smacks a wayward estate agent in the face with a keyboard, understandably paranoid that he might be there to kill them. Even though they don’t know about the killings at this point, seeing a laser on the wall would be enough to raise the hackles of all but the most oblivious of MI5 agents.

Speaking of oblivious agents, Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) gets in a few good lines as well, though he seems perhaps a little less over-the-top so far this season. Then again, he had such a pronounced (and absurd) role in Season 5, anything will seem tame by comparison.

Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar) is still MIA from MI5, and I’m not sure when she’ll return, though I suspect that once Lamb figures out that all of his Joes are in danger, he’ll summon her back (while pretending he couldn’t give a toss). Sid also.

Now Coe and Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) are teaming up, which is an interesting pairing since Coe is so quiet. Shirley and Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan) constantly bickered, but Coe isn’t one to bicker. He might be the perfect (silent) partner for Shirley.

The funeral itself had a bit of a funny moment as well. Because Cartwright was a spy, he never publicly announced his role as First Desk. Instead, he was officially high up in the Transportation division. River’s eulogy, therefore, includes an awkward segment about how difficult his grandfather’s job was due to the many different kinds of vehicles he had to contend with. This has Lamb in stitches in the congregation, much to Catherine’s chagrin. I was cracking up also. Lamb would happily dance on David Cartwright’s grave, but laughing at his funeral seemed cathartic enough.

Of course, Lamb is not all farts and inappropriate comments. When Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley) brings him the dossier on Loy’s death – against the express orders of Diana Taverner – he plays it off as though he couldn’t care less. But he keeps the file, and later he brings River to the scene of Loy’s death. He also has Roddy start looking into other ex-Slow Horses. Soon, he realizes that this was almost certainly intentional, though we still have no idea who’s behind the killings.

Season 6 has a stellar perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and you won’t find any disagreement here. I have screeners for all six episodes but I like to watch shows week-to-week with fans, so I’ve only watched the season premiere so far. It’s fun to not know everything about what happens and to write these recaps as I watch alongside my readers, guessing along with everyone else. I like to come up with theories, debate with fans and enjoy it all organically as it unfolds. At the same time, I’m kind of dying to watch ahead, so no promises.

I know they’ve combined two books into one season this time, which is a first for the show, but I’m not terribly worried. Plenty of British crime dramas have done this in the past, and sometimes it just means less filler, not that anyone could ever accuse Slow Horses of filler.

In any case, this was an excellent opening salvo. We’re introduced to the killers right away. We get David Cartwright’s funeral and a new chapter opens up for River. We also get the return of his father, Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving), who shows up at the funeral. Harkness doesn’t go to the service, but he stands in plain sight, clearly goading River to confront him, and a frazzled River takes the bait.

When things get heated, Frank chops River in the throat, sending him coughing to the ground. He then calmly gets in his car to drive away, but River leaps onto the hood and clings on for dear life. Harkness looks mildly miffed by this and then slams on the brakes, sending River to the ground. He drives off as Lamb, Coe and Shirley watch. A song that is most certainly not the typical Slow Horses theme song plays as Harkness speeds off. Curiouser and curiouser. (The song is “ Love and Death ” by Ebo Taylor, and it comes on about ten seconds after I expected that familiar da-daaa-da of the theme song to start playing).

The mysteries are mounting up. Why is Harkness back, and is it at all related to the deaths of the Slow Horses? Why and how were they removed from MI5’s system? Does any of this have to do with David Cartwright passing away? And, perhaps most importantly, will Roddy finally get a real girlfriend? So many questions, and five episodes to go before we see where all this leads (with more than a few twists and turns along the way, no doubt). Then another year to wait for Season 7.

The really good news is that Slow Horses has been renewed for Season 8, which means we have at least two more seasons of this masterpiece to look forward to. How’s them apples?

What did you think of “The Circle Of Life”? Are you looking forward to this season of Slow Horses? Did I leave anything important out, any stray observations you think I should add to this post? Let me know your thoughts on Twitter , Instagram , or Facebook .

P.S. Because I am always on the prowl for clues, here are the lyrics to the song:

Brothers and sisters Lend me your ears Listen to my story, of love and death I fell deep in love, with Ama Fosua A girl of my dreams, you see what I mean On our wedding day With tears in her eyes She gave me a kiss It was the kiss of death Love and death, walk hand in hand The way to the brave, is just the same Love and death, walk hand in hand The way to the grave, is just the same