Slow horses
Identity theft
Season 4
Episode 1
Editor’s Rating
Photo: Apple
The familiar and yet so satisfying Slow horses The formula dictates that Jackson Lamb, the greasy old fartsmith who runs Slough House, treats his underlings with an outward callousness that conceals a kinship with them that he has shown no one. And so it’s not too surprising that he reacts to the supposed death of River Cartwright, arguably his best young agent, with the same sheer weariness with which he chases after packaged Jaffa Cakes with Alka-Seltzer. He seems to take it all in stride, even if we assume that the loss of a team member tears a hole in his stomach like, say, eating packaged Jaffa Cakes without Alka-Seltzer. While it’s true that he’s seen it all in his time in the spy business and can handle tragedy better than a normal person, the show would be boring if he didn’t have a human side. That would be like making Roddy the main character.
And while we’re still stunned — or maybe not, since the show’s fourth season probably didn’t begin with the death of a major character — Lamb takes the stage in his usual dyspeptic self, as if he’s not about to witness the gruesome spectacle of David Cartwright blasting his grandson to pieces with a shotgun. First, he pauses to provoke Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley), the new head of the Dogs, who replaces the vile Duffy and will put up a good fight, to say the least, for Lamb’s trust. (“Well, you’re an improvement,” Lamb quips. “Because you’re not brain-dead and in a coma.”) Then he scratches his butt and heads up the elder Cartwright’s stairs to the bathroom, where River’s body, disfigured by a shot to the head and one to the chest, supposedly awaits. This, too, is wittily commented on by Lamb. When asked about “identifying features,” he says: “He used to have a face.”
Yet when Lamb finishes examining the crime scene and returns to his car alone, his expression is wonderfully inscrutable. As Gary Oldman plays him, Lamb doesn’t quite look like he’s mourning the loss of his agent, but he’s visibly shaken by what he’s seen, and he’s thinking about it. And although Lamb will figure out part of what happened — that River isn’t really dead, and that his grandfather is hiding in Catherine Standish’s apartment — the fun of “Identity Theft,” the new season’s brisk first episode (called “Spook Street,” based on Mick Herron’s 2017 novel), is that he doesn’t lose his poker face, and neither does the show. Until the big reveal about River’s fate in the closing minutes, most of the characters act exactly as if he really had been killed, and it’s often hilariously revealing. River probably wouldn’t want to know how little some of his colleagues mourn him.
But that’s not even the big bang that opens the season. As Roddy munches on a table of appetizers at Chickado, the fast-food joint where he mistakenly learns there’s a company Christmas party, a bomb lights up the London sky behind him. (He initially misses the explosion because he has Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It” on his headphones.) A car bomb has exploded in the Westacres shopping center, allegedly driven by a 28-year-old freelance IT consultant named Robert Winters, who, while not believed to be a suicide bomber, left a video with the obligatory “lone wolf” terrorist language. There are hints right from the start that the incident is much bigger than Winters and may have nothing to do with him. The address of the car rental company he gave was unoccupied, and his supposed neighbors had never seen or heard of him.
An event of this magnitude is not Slough House territory, at least not yet, and so Diana Taverner enters the scene. Although another new character, Claude Whelan (James Callis), has been promoted to Director General of MI5, or “First Desk,” Taverner is still the organization’s alpha male, so Claude seems to replace her whenever possible. When the Dogs raid Winter’s apartment, it’s Taverner who watches the scene on a series of monitors, including a drone camera hovering just outside the door. The Dogs declare the crime scene clean and make way for forensics, but as investigators pull back the curtains to let some sunlight into the room, another bomb explodes, killing three agents and injuring others. “What a mess,” Taverner mutters.
And so we have a common thread here: professionals shrugging off death. Taverner wants to make sure Claude informs the families of the dead before they hear about it on the news, but she sees it as mere protocol, as MI5 leaders are expected to do when such events occur. Taverner now looks the way Lamb did in the backseat of the car after seeing River’s supposedly pulverized body: she sees a situation she must resolve, not a colleague or colleagues to mourn. Admittedly, her actions are nowhere near as inhumane as those of Roddy, the only Slough House member who knows about River’s death and casually turns off his computer. But these people, as the saying goes, are built differently.
The only person who takes the news about River hard is Louisa, who gave him advice about his grandfather shortly before the shooting. River confides in Louisa about his problems with David, whose memory lapses indicate increasing signs of dementia. In fact, sometimes his grandfather doesn’t even recognize him. This at least serves a purpose for us viewers, who might believe that the dementia-suffering David murdered his grandson with a shotgun because they thought he was an enemy. But since River shows up in the French countryside at the end of the episode, it could also be that River deliberately set a trap for Louisa to give his “murder” more credibility. We don’t know why River himself disappeared or why he’s in France, but he was forced to such extreme measures. If he has to fool Louisa, so be it.
“Identity Theft” is a clever start, as it’s packed with both big incidents and unanswered questions. The third season’s plot was much tighter and more dynamic than the previous two, and the ground was set just as quickly. Is there a connection between Westacres and the Cartwright shooting? Seems likely. But for now, it’s good to have the gang back together.
• Roddy isn’t cool enough to act unfazed when Lamb sends him to a nonexistent Christmas party: “Yeah, well, you have to be in the game to be played.”
• If you watch the shootout again, you see David with a shotgun saying, “You are not my grandson,” before killing the alleged intruder. His then saying, “Oh my God, what have I done?” makes it seem as though he has River killed, but we know that’s not true, so it’s likely that he recognizes the victim, whoever that is, and feels remorse. Stay tuned.
• Funny back and forth between Emma and Lamb about Slough House: “So you’re in charge of the Rejects?” she asks. “They don’t like being called that,” he replies. “What do you call them then?” “The Rejects.”
• Marcus attempting to waterboard Shirley at the office over a paper clip bet is a wonderful way to bring in two important supporting characters who are otherwise not important to the episode.
• A new member of Slough House, JK Coe (Tom Brooke), is introduced as a serious, intense eccentric who doesn’t say a word until a loud “fuck” near the end of the episode. A promising start.
