TL;DR: Slow Horses Season 6 Episode 5 goes full blockbuster with a brutal chase, a real River and Sid payoff and excellent turns from Oldman and Scott Thomas. River’s luck feels too generous, but it’s a gripping lead-in to the finale
Slow Horses has always worked as the anti-Bond. Its spies are washed-up, its safehouses smell of takeaway, and its idea of a gadget is Roddy Ho’s ego. So it’s strange, and frankly a little thrilling, that “Sayonara,” the penultimate episode of Season 6 on Apple TV, is the most blockbuster hour the show has ever produced. There’s a violent car chase, a romance that finally gets a real payoff, a political grilling, an old-school surveillance sequence, and an ending big enough to make Daniel Craig check his insurance. It shouldn’t fit this series, but it mostly does, because the show uses the spectacle to set up its finale instead of replacing its usual misery.
Lamb’s quiet tradecraft steals the loudest episode of the season
For all the fireworks, my favourite stretch of “Sayonara” is also its quietest. Damien Cantor (Harry Lloyd) has been a question mark all season, and the episode finally sketches what he’s after: a Russian media distribution deal billed as the largest in that country’s history. The details stay frustratingly vague, and I suspect that’s deliberate, because whether Cantor wants to broadcast propaganda or produce it is the kind of grey area this show likes to leave hanging. What matters is that Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) has already connected Cantor to Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving) and the killing of Andy Nesmith, and he’s closing in.
The resulting tail is pure John le Carré: Lamb following Cantor’s contact from a children’s ballet rehearsal to a bookshop, with no gunfire and no gadgets, just patience and observation. Then she shakes him, which tells you everything about who you’re dealing with, since civilians don’t lose Jackson Lamb. Oldman plays it with a stillness that makes his usual slovenly act look like camouflage, and the scene reminds you that underneath the flatulence is the most dangerous person in the building. It’s a nice counterweight to the bigger set pieces, and it gives the finale a mystery worth solving.
Kristin Scott Thomas makes an interrogation look like a power move
Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) spends the episode under siege, and she treats every attack as a chance to give a lecture. Lamb confronts her first, having worked out why the Slough House records were erased and what Sid’s paper “death” had to do with covering up the off-book assassination in Kazan. Then MI5’s oversight committee, made up entirely of men, puts her under questioning. Rather than defend herself, she turns both encounters into speeches about an underfunded, sluggish service that needs someone like her to keep it running.
Scott Thomas is ridiculously good at this. Taverner never raises her voice, yet you can feel the air leave the room, and the series has always understood that her arrogance is both her armour and her weak spot. What makes these scenes work is the question running underneath: is she as in control as she claims, or just very good at pretending until the floor gives way? Every First Desk before her has been chewed up eventually, and this episode leaves her in a fascinating spot heading into the finale.
River and Sid finally get their action-movie moment
The episode picks up seconds after last week’s cliffhanger, with Sid Baker (Olivia Cooke) taken at gunpoint by GRU operatives Jim (Kyle Soller) and Jane (MyAnna Buring) and River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) chasing the car. What follows is a brutal, messy chase featuring a car-crash sequence that lands with real weight, and a novelty number plate used as a weapon in a way that’s very on-brand for a show that loves turning junk into survival tools. Not everyone walks away from the wreckage, and the violence has the ugly, desperate quality that separates this series from slicker spy thrillers.
The real story, though, is that this is Sid and River’s episode. After seasons of loaded glances, they finally share tender moments, including River opening up about his grandfather’s death, along with some gallows-humour flirting that Lowden and Cooke play with easy, believable chemistry. River also makes a series of reckless, heart-first decisions that build to a grand gesture I won’t spoil, though it’s about as close to a Hollywood hero move as this show allows. My only issue is that River’s impulsive choices work out a bit too smoothly, which feels uncharacteristically generous for a series that usually punishes every mistake.
Slough House at its most chaotic and its most human
While the action plays out elsewhere, the rest of the Horses are stuck in Taverner’s country holiday home, and the contrast is wonderful. They’re watching TV, drinking her wine, snacking on cookies and making Molotov cocktails, which is about the most Slough House version of a safehouse imaginable. Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) gets to be useful digging into Cantor, which naturally means he’s unbearable about it. The cosiness is clearly a trap, though, because Harkness and his crew have made it plain the house won’t stay peaceful for long.
The emotional highlight comes from Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) and Reece Nesmith (Lenny Rush) at the dinner table. Both are grieving deeply flawed men, Standish her old boss Charles Partner and Reece his father, and neither really wants to talk about it. Their conversation is guarded and awkward, yet you can see a small amount of comfort in finding shared ground. Reeves has spent too much of this season playing den mother to a bunch of grumblers, so it’s satisfying to see the writing finally give her something thoughtful to do.
A cinematic penultimate episode that bends the show’s rules
Visually, “Sayonara” is a beauty. The foggy countryside shots are eerie and wide, giving the episode a feature-film scale that the show’s usual grey London offices rarely allow. That polish also exposes the tension I kept feeling throughout. Slow Horses is at its best when victories are small, grubby and paid for in full, and here the characters get kisses, wine and heroic moments in uncommon quantities. The show seems aware of this, though, and the good times read less like a softening of tone and more like the calm before the inevitable burning down.
Verdict
“Sayonara” is Slow Horses in full blockbuster mode, packed with a gripping chase, a long-awaited romantic payoff, Kristin Scott Thomas at her most imperious and a superb bit of old-fashioned tradecraft from Gary Oldman. The Standish and Reece scene adds real emotional depth, and the countryside cinematography gives the season a striking visual identity. Its main weakness is that River’s luck feels too kind for a show built on failure, and the Cantor mystery is still hazier than I’d like this late in the season. Fans who love the series for its dark humour and messy, character-driven espionage will find plenty to enjoy, while purists may raise an eyebrow at how close it comes to Bond territory. Either way, it’s a strong setup for what promises to be an explosive finale.
