The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Slow Horses’ Season 4, Episode 3: The Stench of Death

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Jo and Rob dance around danger to recap the third episode of ‘Slow Horses’ Season 4. They open with a few more listener emails before discussing the dark backstory of Frank Harkness, the dynamic between Standish and David Cartwright, and why the blissfully ignorant Giti is quickly becoming one of the show’s most delightful characters (2:06). Along the way, they theorize about what’s going on with the mysterious J.K. Coe and how Bad Sam Chapman’s role in the story has grown season to season (29:42). Later, they introduce a brand-new segment called Spy Vs. Spy, where they point out some of the best (and worst) examples of spycraft in this week’s episode (42:32). Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producer: Kai Grady Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite. Borashead committed to craft since 1905. The Prestige TV podcast beat. I'm Joanna Robinson. I am Rob Mahoney. We're here today to talk about the Emmys. No, we're not. Well, kind of.

We have a lot of thoughts about the Emmys this year. We're very invested in our prestige TV children who are at the Emmy is this year. Any quick Emmy hot take you want to get off Rob Mahoney? I mean, you know the one off the top.

Tadanogo Osano. Sanu. fucking robbed. All due respect to Billy Kroodup, who's also, like, tangentially one of my guys, but not one of the core guys. I never thought in all my days that I would ever be rooting

against Billy Kroot up at an award show. I don't want to be put in this position. No. But, yeah, our guy, Tadonobu, who plays Yabushige, and Shogun was absolutely robbed. But Shogun did really well. We're very proud of them.

Slow horses picked up a riding Emmy, and that's really exciting. and yeah, I had a great time just cheering for our friends at the Emmys this year. And I believe for Slow Horses, if I'm not mistaken, its first Emmy win, right? Yeah, I mean, this is the first year that they were really seriously in contention. So, yeah, Gary didn't win and Jack Loudon didn't win to stuff like that,

but they won a writing Emmy, possibly because Shogun was competing against itself in that category, but we'll give it to them. We love the ride against the little horses. So, NEM is an Emmy, and, well-deserved. That is our Emmy take, but really we're here to talk about Slow Horses, season four, episode three, the halfway point of the season, devastating. We're already here. Just a reminder that you can email us at arstime, the Pope at gmail.com, and we got a ton of great emails this week. They are flowing, Joe. This is a very hop-in inbox. This week's episode is

called Penny for Your Thoughts, written by Merwena Banks, and directed by, as every episode is, by Adam Randall. Any Romaghani takes on Penny for Your Thoughts as a title if it's episode? I was trying to actually place it. I'm not quite sure. I agree. Ours time the Pope at Gmail. Any many thoughts about the episode title?

I have many pennies for your thoughts today, Joe. Because there are a lot of things that I will say. I'm torn on, confused about, not in a bad way, but we're in the middle of a season. and there's still a lot of mystery. I would say, first and foremost, trying to suss out exactly where David Cartwright is mentally. After we talked about it last week and you kind of put the bug in my head,

and Jackson Lamb also put the bug in my head, that this guy is perhaps playing it up in certain circumstances, perhaps not in others. And getting to spend that time with Jonathan Price and figure out what he is playing and when has been one of the great joys of the season so far. I would agree. I would agree. Anything you're like a little less high on that you want to mention at the top? I mean, I'll say overall this episode, while still fun and good,

is probably the more expositiony procedural episode of the season so far. It's a lot of like filling in backstory, letting us know who these people are, River connecting some dots between, you know, these cold body identities and who the actual people were, which is very important, but not necessarily the most propulsive part of the season. You didn't think the incredible chasing where River goes five steps and then falls through a shed. felt propulsive to you? I have a lot to say about Rivers' relative lack of urgency

when there is a fucking posse. And a dog? With a dog. Dog means, look, one guy outside with a phone, that's just a dude on a bench. Not really something to worry about. A couple of dudes. With shovels and sledgehammers. Once the dog shows up, but that's game over.

We are taking this seriously. And he puts a lot of faith in a little slide latch on the door. We're going to talk about good, Spycraft, bad, Spycraft. Spycraft a little later on per prompt we got via email. And I do want to sort of go through, I don't know, what we think we know. But before I get there, I want to start with a few emails that we got to sort of clear up some stuff we talked about last week. First and foremost, the most important thing that happened in our email inbox this week is everyone making sure that I very much understood that Jack Loudon is not only bad at speaking French. She's very

bad at speaking French and any attempts I had to say otherwise was silly and foolish. So Jack Loudon, great job. And then I was like sort of poking around to see like, is it possibly he speaks French? And I was, there was an interview he gave to like Rolling Stone France, but he gave it in English. And I was like, now this guy doesn't speak French. Okay. So he's doing a bad French accent seemingly on purpose. And it is terrible top to bottom. And that was what a lot of people emailed us about. Beth emailed us about the, actually a couple of people emailed us about the timeline question when Diana Taviner says the tale under the Cold War was 28 years ago and you and I were like, er. So this is what Beth wrote. When I was thinking through, I remember

that at the end of season two, we learned that this show is set in the recent past question mark. When we see Min's Memorial Plack go up, it appears to list his death is taking place in 2016. Yeah. So knowing that, season four might be taking place in like 2008. 2018, 2017. It is the classic TV and film adaptation we've seen, which is everything takes place just before COVID starts. You know, everything is roughly 2017 to 2019 and never a day past it. Yeah, Beth says this would put the tail end of the Cold War in 1990,

which makes a lot more sense. And that's true. COVID might be part of it, but I think some other people email list will let us know that the sort of financial crisis, the end of the financial crisis is sort of the setting for the beginning of the book series. So perhaps they wanted to make sure that that was where. it all began. So they're tracking a bit with the book series. And so we are in 2017-2018 territory, which is fun to know. I like that sort of backgrounding too with the financial crisis.

It fits the groatiness of Slauhaus, how like haphazard things can feel even at the park and within MI5. Like, yeah, this could be a place that's maybe a little understaff. This could be a place that's maybe diverted in way too many directions because of everything that's happening around the world. I buy it. I love it. And then we got this email from Eric, who is a question for our listeners, because we can't answer this. Eric wants to know if he can pick up book five, which is called London Rules. They've already shot season five, right?

Yes. But is it London Rules or London Rules? London Rules is how I'm reading it, but probably not. It's probably the Rules of London. Yeah, we've talked to this for Moscow Rules. Moscow Rules. Yeah. I would love Moscow Rules also if that's, you know, in the cards.

Moscow Rules. So, can Eric pick up book number five, having not a lot of it? read books one through four, like watch seasons one through four, and then pick up book number five and read on from there. Ars time the Pope at Gmail.com if you want to give Eric any book reading advice. And last and not least, Tristan just wants to co-sign Rob's desire to make nice guys more of a thing in our culture and perhaps make nice guys to you happen. From Tristan's lips to every production assistant's ears to get that script in front of

whoever it needs to be in front of, let's make it happen. Thank you, Tristan. I feel like we can find Russell Crow. I feel like if we search in enough pubs, we can find Russell Crow. So make Nice Guys 2 happen. I'm still, actually, never mind. There's too many problematic people connected with that now. I was about to say, I'm still in the make the man from uncle's sequel happen.

And then I just remember everyone involved. And I was like, never mind. Okay. So back to Slow So Horses. Back to Slough House. Let's start with the category I'm still calling Project Treadstone, which is the like born identity thing. So like, what do we know that is going on with these?

young men and their leader, Frank Harkness. So to recap, Bertrand is the name of the young man who looks perhaps like River Cartwright. Oh, are you applauding my... It was a mild applause. You put the appropriate... Bertron. The appropriate bit of seasoning on that. I really appreciated it.

That is the one who supposedly looks like River Cartwright, enough to get an angry mob after our river. Okay. Patrice is what our listener, Larry, emailed us calling him the T-1000, our Terminator, who gets run over by a cab in this episode and then mysteriously disappears. So that's our, like, most active, that's our active agent sort of running around London. And then it's, is it Eve, Ev? Eve. A.K. Robert Winters is the one who bombed the shopping center at the start of the season. So those are our three young men.

two of which are Ditt. So Patrice's last young man standing Frank Harkness, their handler, and we find out some very important

information in this episode. He is a Charles Manson-esque Svengali-like figure who would... I think just dedicated father. Okay, a crew young teenage girls to breed them.

Well, I didn't say it was perfect. A generation of super spies, question mark, or super assassins, I suppose. Yes. And one of those young women was, quote, an English. And so our listener Tim wrote in at the end of last week's episode to say,

when David Cartwright angrily and wrongly says, River, I'm your father. You rightly point out the pathos of this being his grandfather, but also the man who raised him. But what if Bertrand looks so much like River? Because he is, in fact, David's son abandoned all those years. Tim, great theory. I say strike it, reverse it. I would say I think Frank Harkness is River Cartwright's father. I think isn't that what the implication is?

Is it? If there's a young man who looks uncannily like River Cartwright, whose father was having sex with a bunch of teenage girls, one of whomst was an English. Yeah. Would you not say that that is, he's like, River is a long-lost one of these super assassins because something, I presume,

something David did in the past to get either his daughter or his grandson out of there. It does seem possible when you lay it out. And honestly, the fact that literally everyone in this town thinks that River looks like this guy. Yeah. Including his own mother, including her cousin.

Like, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that these are supposed to be biologically very similar-looking people. At which point, I think you make a compelling case. And I don't know what the order of events are. I don't know what the operations are. Like how David comes home with River in some sense or finds him later in life. We'll have to kind of clear up the timeline as we go.

Yeah. But now that you mention it and lay it out that way, I think it does seem like we're pointed in something resembling that direction, if not exactly that. Taking it in that light, if we want to believe that theory, all the time that David says in this episode included in the season in general, I did it for River to protect him to protect River. and we think he's talking about whatever happened in the bathroom. But if in fact he's talking about whatever he did in the past to rescue River from this situation or protect him from the truth of this situation or whatever it is, that seems likely to me. This is one of my favorite TV tropes, which is the double speak of someone who has slightly lost their mind. Yes.

Love digging in. Love all the double meanings. Let's keep it going. right. Let's get a whole David episode, please. I call that the Arlo Givens. The Arlo Givens. All right, so let's start with Catherine and David and Louisa. It's sort of how I'm grouping this little plot line. So Catherine talking about Charles David, like this whole thing really cracked me up. It is not funny, of course, to watch David, like, grapple with his own, you know, faculties.

But to watch Catherine try to navigate it and try to work him at the same time. So, like, bringing up Charles, she doesn't. know yet how much Jackson takes credit for Charles's death, but she doesn't know that David killed Charles, right? I don't think she has a sense of his involvement. Other than presumably he would have been

first desk at the time. Right. So she says, well, wasn't it that Charles was first desk and David was second desk? Like he was the Diana Tavernor to Charles's Claude Weeland. I think that's... For some reason, I thought Charles' partner had already moved on, but maybe that's exactly

the case. And I mean, that's certainly would hint at the broader, like, games between first and second desk thing we have going on in these episodes. Like, there's an echo there for sure. And I feel like, I mean, I don't... Our stand the Pope at Gmail.com, if we've got that wrong and you have better book knowledge.

But, like, when David is saying, like, I ran that place. Doesn't that sound like a Diana Tavernor thing to say? But he was first desk, though. At some point, yeah, yeah. But, like, so when Catherine is talking about Charles David, then he goes, I killed him. River.

But, like, he killed Charles, you know, at the same time. This guy. He's just teasing us. Every line he's teasing us. But I love when he's like, you're just a secretary. And then she uses that to sort of manipulate him later when she's just sort of like, you know, he'll be reading the cables from Berlin, agents and play awaiting instructions. We can't disrupt the schedule. I'm a secretary.

It's what I do. I thought that was great stuff. I really liked it. I think pretty good agent work by Catherine overall in this episode. Yeah. knowing how and when to relocate David Cartwright, knowing how to play him in a way that, I mean, I'm sure he has some awareness that he's being played.

At least it seems to suggest that. Yeah. That he is not completely oblivious to the fact that Catherine is manipulating him a little bit. But I think she's manipulating him relatively softly and gently, playing to what he knows, playing to kind of where he is anchored most, which is in his life as a spy,

as a person within MI5, and within specifically the Cold War, right? This idea that he has all of this ingrained muscle memory around what is safe and what is not and what is proper and what is not. And by appealing to that, she can at least get him into the chair and get him a cup of tea

when he's trying to get out the door. Genuinely great work from Catherine until she loses him. Well, yeah. A great babysitter until the baby wandered off. And this is a question I have about what kind of London Flat has a back door, but apparently this London flat.

I mean, Emma does comment that Catherine lives in a very nice flat. So I guess it's a nice flat in a building of flats that have back doors to them. But Louise shows up as well. I agree with you about Catherine. I thought she was great until she loses statement. And I also would ask her to cat sit for my cat as a very excellent choice for that. Louisa rolling up and trying to, trying like the helpless damsel routine with Emma. And then rebuffing the neck tattoo dog.

who was like trying to help her and being like, don't I know you? It's great stuff, I thought, from Louisa. I thought it was a great play by her. I was just cackling at Louisa's whole deal here. I put it on the clock. She manages to stall Emma for exactly 31 seconds. Not our best work.

Not her best work. And look, Emma does not exactly cover herself in glory in this episode, but she and Louisa both come out looking at least a little bit better than neck tat guy, who just gets completely spun around. That's true. It's true. And then Louisa does say this, you know, Catherine is the one to really identify

how hard it must have been for Louisa, especially this whole confusion about reverse death. And she's saying, like, it's pretty much the final straw I might join you on the outside. So like, you and I both, the day Louisa quits is the day, well, we don't quit the show, but we get very upset.

So we hope that never happens. I might. I might quit the show. Don't put it past me. But I like how seriously the show is taking, like how upset she would be about River, right? that this is not something, you know, like Shirley and Marcus and Ho, they're all off on like new adventures and Ho especially clearly like not caring, but it's important that someone is like

still processing this traumatic case of mistaken identity, etc. I think it's twofold too. It's the idea of someone like River or someone who's important to her dying in the way that men died. But it's also Jackson dangling the ambiguity. of River dying when he should know as well as anybody that like, this is the one button you do not press with someone like Louisa who has been through what she's been through.

And yet, like, Lamb just does not give a shit about that stuff. His concern is the op. His concern is river's safety. And I think all of that is well-founded and fair. But it's also telling that Catherine Stand is just like the one person in the office who was actively thinking about the feelings of the people around her. Like she manages that place in every sense. And if not for her, we kind of see what happens to it.

Yeah. I mean, like, you know, shout out to Moira and her cleaning skills and her nose gay, whatever it takes to get through the stench that is Jackson's office. But yeah, Catherine is the real sort of like spine to the place. And Jackson knows that. And that's why he's still sending her salary checks to her. Eity and Claude is where I kind of want to go next. We're going to the park. Diana Tavenner is not in this episode, which is a travesty.

But Claude is here doing his best. Here's my favorite thing that happens. And there's a lot of great stuff that happens. Actually, it's tied. It's either when Claude goes to geeky and he's like, no hierarchy's here. I like to think to myself. Really good. But then, of course, that's the setup.

And then the punchline is him saying to Molly when I say first desk and I say second desk, who do you think comes first? And she just goes tie out of time. What do you make of Claude's play here? Well, I mean, for one, he does try to talk such. a big game to Molly, but speaks to her like he is terrified of her, which of course he is. Makes total sense.

I want to go through this piece by piece, because one, I love Geithy. I love this character. I love how we have spent all of a few minutes with her, and I feel like we know exactly who she is. The absolute glee on her face when she gets the equivalent of like a little pat on the head,

I have a complete sense of that character. And when she's like, I would love to do that, but love is probably the wrong word. She's like a little over-eager a little pleasure to have in class. I have a sense of this character's vibe and I really enjoy that performance a lot. Molly is obviously on the other end of the spectrum,

very withholding, wants to live in her own little world down in records. And I think it's in such an interesting position now because we saw this cutaway of her watching Diana Tavernor shred every bit of evidence that Robert Winters ever existed. And presumably, you know, some evidence

that some other cold bodies existed. We don't know exactly what all was destroyed there. But she also says overtly that, yeah, Diana Tavernor is the one running the show, and she clearly has a deference, if not her own version of fear, for the kind of retribution that Tavernor can exact. And so no one is taking Claude very seriously except for Geithee, who clearly just relishes the opportunity to be praised by an authority figure. I also think, yes, I love your description of pleasure to have in class.

I think also that Gite's delight that Diana told her no, And Claude is telling her yes. Actually, I was right the whole time, even though she said, even though the mean lady said no. Exactly. So good. All right, anything else you want to say about the park this week? Also, just shout out to Claude for getting in the game. Yeah, exactly.

It's a little bumbling. It's clear that he doesn't quite know how to maneuver the place. But he has put his big boy pants on and decided that he wants to participate in everything that happens at the park. So we welcome him. He's not just still sitting on that double-decker bus. sadly, like, riding around London and crying over Diana Tavener's being mean to him. That takes us to France, to Le Vond, and rivers there.

And there is nothing that, like, gives me sympathetic pains harder than waking up, feeling like you have a head wound of some kind, like that. Is this tree trauma? What's what are you speaking to here? How dare you bring that back into my life? I don't know. I'm just like, I'm always so worried about them because head injuries are, like, he had a head to show he was out for a long time and you're not physically you're not supposed to be blacked out

for that long. It happens all the times of movies and television but actually you would not ever be out for that long but like how scrambled is his noggin? Like you know, can we then forgive him for falling through his shed and then just like walking down the street because he's still concussed. I don't know. So something think about. That is fair. As we dig into the spycraft of this episode, I think River is doing a lot of stuff that he's He wouldn't ordinarily do and not taking things probably as seriously as he should.

And maybe that's why. Maybe he is fully scrambled up there. Maybe, I mean, clearly this whole episode has taken a kind of toll on him. He is out of his element. He is out of his comfort zone. He doesn't quite know what to make of these people or this conflict or this guy he's supposed to look like.

I just don't know that that would result in him taking like a casual stroll away from a mob chasing him and also a dog full, like full bore sprinting in his direction. It's sort of, I mean, I know this isn't actually his family because whatever passing resemblance he has to Bertrand is probably from elsewhere, but Cousin Victor also being like, don't worry, I'll settle the mob,

and then just getting a cudgel to the face, we're not sending our finest necessarily in this plotline. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I mean, Cousin Victor is the finest. He goes immediately from sticking a gun in River's face to putting up the cheeseboard. Like, those are the two modes of French existence, and I just want to acknowledge it. I love that when both Jack Loudon's delivery of,

why did you hit me in the head? Did we need that? Did we need that? Did we need that? And then also the Mered, followed by the blessed translation of, I think he says fuck instead of shit. But, you know, essentially just like, in both languages, let me express that I'm having a bad time in the month.

And maybe I should have stayed in that cafe and had my cup of coffee instead. I actually really appreciated when he looks out the window and we can see the smoke from Lizab, so we know exactly sort of like how far away we are. We're actually still quite close. And a sense of the timing, too, that it's recent enough that things are still pluming. Yeah, things are still blooming. All right, what do you want to say about our pal Natasha, the mother of Bertram?

Anything you want to say about this? I don't know that there's a lot to dig into with her other than the sort of exposition dump that she gives that you already went through up top about the fact that this is kind of a happy little family in its way, if a happy little terrorist revolutionary family in which all the

mothers are excised and never allowed to see their children again. It's just a little summer camp. Okay. But in doing so, we're at least looping these characters together, right? Bertrand and Eve are half-brothers. We know that based on their

circumstances. Maybe River is related to them, maybe not. But all of these characters who could be who could be popping up as being tangentially related to this plot, there's like a literal familial connection beyond just bunking up together at this estate. So thinking about that, when we watch someone like Patrice back in London taking orders from Frank, is he taking orders from his boss who's running him? Or is he taking orders from his father who's running him, you know, is a question to ask yourself. The other clues, I guess, Natasha gives us, she says the other girls, there's a Greek, she says Russian and English. She sort of buries the English in there and like Jack Loudoun, like, Rivers looking out the window when she says that.

And I was just sort of like, I'm paying a close attention, Natasha to what you're saying, even if River isn't. Even if he's distracted by the mob, I'm paying attention to this exposition. And then the painting came up again, the mural. So like, you know, we'll keep our eye, mural watch. Yes. 2024. What could all mean? One of the mothers painted it, but not Natasha.

But maybe Rivers' mom. Did Rivers Mom paint it? That would be the smoking gun, the smoking paint brush? The dripping paint brush. The, yeah, the smouldering palette. I love it. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help.

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I'm just Emma flight. Okay. I need everyone to know since this is not a video pod that Rob just did a like put his hand on his forehead in exasperation, facial expression for Emma. Yeah. She just seems like a real dunce, I got to say, three episodes in. Total dunce.

The aha body language, as she's like ripping open every closet in Catherine's flat later in this episode. Totally embarrassing. Embarrassing. I need a win for her. Otherwise, what are we doing here? And actually, it's funny because watching her do that, I was thinking about, like, if this were seen with Duffy,

I would be enjoying it so much because it's like, it's good to see Duffy embarrassed. Well, I still did enjoy it. I can't lie. I don't know. I'm just sort of like, why am I only rooting for her? Because she's a young woman and I'm like, don't embarrass me in this job of a flight. A woman can run the dogs.

You're allowed, but I don't, I don't know. You, like Jackson Lamb, don't. don't want to see a bunch of men called in to do a woman's job. Correct. Correct. Here's my favorite Jackson Lamb line in this moment. When he says going to the park is like being an IKEA, you never get out of the place. That's a good one. We were discussing, this is a light shank episode in terms of lamb shanks.

I would say the IKEA line or also him threatening to report Emma to HR, those are probably my favorite little zingers that he throws in. But the knives are away for Jackson Lamb in this week, I think, for the most part. I think he's, by his standards, relatively gentle. He's got a job to do. He doesn't have a job to do. There's a lot going on. And part of that job is just taking Emma Flight for an absolute walk, you know, sending her to Catherine's while also alerting Catherine to the fact that she is coming

before he even speaks to Emma Flight. Before he's even like a thousand percent sure that she's the one at the top of this building, although, of course, he is because he knows his shit. I thought that little call out of him moving David Cartwright before even giving up David Cartwright. Yeah. It's just great Jackson Lamb shit. We don't have like an iconic Jackson Lamb

Landshake in this episode, but we do have ho saying to Emma Flight, where do you park your wings? Meaning you're an angel. In case you thought I was implying you were a seagull or a crow. But with those legs, you're more of a flamingo, aren't you?

And my question, Rob, is, when are we getting our matching tattoos that say that? commemorate our time covering slow horses. I can't wait. I'm imagining him in like a friendship ring kind of style where it's like you to line them up to get the full quote. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like a beef fry sort of situation. I love that. This was one of those lines where as soon as he asked where she parked her wings, I'm laughing. Then as he goes into it, I'm cringing. But then he lands it with the flamingo and I'm back. I'm back laughing again. Just incredible delivery. Seagull or a croat really got me. We also

we are tracking this whole mention to his girlfriend again. Yes. Whether or not he's being catfished, we suspect, perhaps, but to what end? I don't know, but she gets another mention. Also, the most important part, it's cuffing

season, Joe. Oh. You know, Roddy is, he's really laying it on thick. The fact that Emma's like trying to walk out and he calls her back to deliver this line about the wings. And doesn't bother to get up from the weight machine? Well, I mean, What this reminded me of was the Tommy boy, like, do you know where the weight room is?

Kind of like situation. Like that was the vibe that he's trying to put out. And I both respect the game and I love how absolutely bewildered Roddy looks when Emma seems to be responding positively to it, at least like approaching him in a way that literally no other woman in this show ever has. It's cuffing season. What a great line from Rob Mahoney. By the way, I already told you before we started recording that I spent the morning, so I were preparing for rings of power in which like no fewer than three people get shackled to something.

So I would say it's shackling season over our rings of power. But it's cuffing season here on slow horses. Shirley and JK go to help Rattie, help being a flexible term, I suppose for Shirley. Again, so we did get an email about sort of the JK co backstory, which I think we get in book five. London rules, which you and I haven't read. And they didn't spoil it. They just said, you do learn some things about him. We learned some things about, I, again, Tom Brooke is an actor I really like.

This is a character I am currently grappling with in terms of a new ingredient into Sall House. Now, as you mentioned, we're like mid-season. We're sort of like, where are we going from here? We're figuring things out. But especially in contrast to Shirley and Marcus who didn't fit in necessarily perfectly from the beginning, but like I understood how these ingredients sort of mixed in. This absolute psycho, I don't know.

What do you want to say about this? He's just such an antisocial ingredient. And that's what makes him stick out like a sore thumb because everyone else will banter, will get into it with each other. And because of that, have more opportunity to actually bounce off and bounce around things. He's just sitting in the corner

in every line of dialogue from JK Co at this point sounds like a line from a manifesto. Like, everything sounds creepy. And some of that is writing, some of that is delivery. We have our first insight into literally anything that has happened to this person before,

which is basically that he was tied up and handcuffed and tortured slash threatened to be tortured for 72 hours, which, yeah, we would all come out on the other side a bit darker, a bit more distant. I wouldn't still be working for the search. I certainly would not.

I don't, he doesn't strike me as someone who wants to get back in the park. And so I guess my question is like, what is he doing here? What does he want out of this job? And again, the books might have the answer to that. We aren't reading the books, but like, don't spoil anything for us necessarily. But if you have thoughts on JK that are informed by the book, let us know. But yeah, this like putting a knife to Shirley's throat. In a snap, just like a moment, flinch reaction.

Because she touched him. And then later he says, I don't like to be touched. But, yeah, like him in talking about the torture was harrowing. But I'm also just sort of like, why are you here? What do you want? What do you want from this? Okay. We should say that before Jackson takes off, we get this interaction with Moira.

But before Moira walks in, he's just watching the news and we hear from Eve on the sort of confession tape. I can't remember if we heard this line before. We watched some of the tape from him, but he says, you will hear from my brother's soon, which if we heard before might just sound like my brothers in arms, but now sounds like my brothers and cuffs. My literal brothers, my literal brothers who I

grew up on a creepy cult manner home with learning how to be a super assassin. So there you go. And then Moira. Bless Moira for getting me to Google something what a Tussie Mussey is. It had to be Tussie Mussey. I was like, as soon as you said it.

It had to be Googled. I had to know a bit more. And it really is just what she says, which is a nosegay, something, to sort of block the smell of stuff. And then we get this reveal that, this is our suspicion last week, but I couldn't put the dots together. When Patrice is like,

the old man, I've got to kill him, he's not very smart. They work for David Cartwright. I was like, what other old man have we met? Sam Chapman. The literally only other older man that we've met. Other older man that we've met. Sam Chapman, who was David Cartwright's bagman.

his personal bodyguard and went to France in the early 90s. And as we know, has been kind of a sounding board for Lamb, if not always a source. I think it's less that he has inside information and more that he's someone who's been in the game for so long. He's one of the only people that Lamb can go to for an honest opinion about something. And so him being targeted is a real threat. Let's do like a little tour of where Sam Chapman has popped up previously on Slow Horses. So he was the head of dogs before Duffy. So it goes Chapman, Duffy, our babe, Emma Flight, who I just really need a win for her.

His name comes up in season one as the head of the dogs who goes to the scene where Charles partner has been killed and reports that nothing looks suspicious. So basically it seems like covered up what David and Jackson did to Charles Partner. He, in season two, he gets the info on the men supposed hit and run. He gets info on the woman who was supposedly the driver, but was not actually the driver behind men, men's death. And then in season three, he has intel on Catherine's kidnapping. And their favorite place to meet is the laundromat. And so we've seen him a couple times.

And this is just a perfect slow horse's payoff. This is a character who was just like really gently seated in to the mixture. and then like David Cartwright in previous seasons. And now it's like coming to the four in this season. Presuming he has more to do beyond this episode, which I have to assume he does. One would think. He has to have some answers.

Anything you want to say about Sam? Do we know why he's called bad Sam Chapman? I was just thinking about the terms of like bad Leroy Brown. Not a bad association to have as those things go. He's like scary. He does seem like he does seem like he. is scary and we see him pull the baton on some kids

who he's having like a conversation with and trying to get intelligence from in this episode. I could see him being a dark force to reckon with at certain points in his career. Yeah, and he's not nothing against the Terminator who's after him in this episode. He certainly does better for himself than our girl Shirley does.

Well, let's say first of all. I want to nominate a terrible piece of spy craft this week. Marcus. Marcus. shouting her name. And what's so weird about this is we had a similar Marcus and Shirley tailing situation in previous seasons in which Marcus is like doing this tailing while in front

to be less subtle. He's mad at Shirley because she has called him on the phone. And here he is calling her name from across the street, chasing her down, really just putting a glaring neon sign around the idea that they are following this guy. Yeah, I mean, the best I can say about that is that our, that it's to show how much Marcus is, like, really going through it, I guess, is that he's lost all of his skills that we've seen him exhibit in previous season. So many of the slow horses are very off their game right now.

I do want to go back to Sam really quickly to that interrogation scene because I think when he's talking to those teens, because I think it is important to point out that he calls a suspect or whatever KZ and they're like, do you mean KZ? And my question is, do you think Sam Chapman listens to JZ? Like, do you think that he listens to him and does he call him? that. I have questions. I mean, he does not, first of all, listen to listen to Jay Z, but if he did, he would call him

it. Exactly. All right, so let's go to Marcus and selling the gun before we go to the absolutely abysmal tailing sequence. You and I are both huge fans of this character dancer, who is the one who buys the gun of Marcus. What do you want to say about that? This is a pro

dancer podcast. Yes. Great vibe. Great negotiator. I love his style. I love someone who, when you meet them for the first time is like, let me tell you what I'm all about. Let me tell you my entire perspective on the world, especially when that perspective involves tiptoeing around trouble at every opportunity. I have no choice but to respect this guy's vibe. And ballroom dancing.

Like both. Why not both? Why not both? I sent stanzer and dance right around it. Our listener, Damien, wanted to point out some intricacies of gun rules in the UK that we two dumb Americans might not be aware. of, which is... You can forgive us, based on the fact that here you can walk into a Walmart and buy a gun, no questions asked. So we live in a different world back here. We live in a time. Romahoni is what I've heard. Demi wrote, just one thing for the episode two pod of Marcus is selling a handgun in London. He's not pawning it as suggested in passing. There's no legal handgun sales in the UK and a state of belief that he can sell it to a criminal and buy a back shows both his desperation and self-deception in Sharper Light. And surely's relatively low level of concern is a warning light in its own right. I think the gun that he's selling also shows us just how deep in he is,

because this is a character we have seen opened his trunk and he's got a fucking armory in there. And so the fact that he's selling, what's at least his service weapon or service weapon adjacent, I think means he's already sold basically everything else that he has to sell. The whole trunk arsenal is gone. It's gone. It's gone. Oh, God. Okay.

So then we get the best negotiation scene of all times. where dancer just sticks firm on 3,000 and even has the gall to just be like great negotiating into market but he's like yeah 3,000 I can sell it for 5,000 that's how profit works I mean Savvy businessman

Dancer my new favorite character please come back to him always I loved him he's teaching us something about profit margins he's teaching Marcus a lot about life and honestly the fact that he knows that Marcus is an MI5 agent because he represents himself as such when he walks in, means he knows he has the upper hand. He doesn't have to move a dollar in this negotiation.

And frankly, three seems pretty generous considering the circumstances. The obvious desperation sort of rolling off of Marcus here. So then we get, as you mentioned, this like abysmal tailing sequence where Patrice gets the drop on them pretty quickly. Lamb is on top of everything from afar, right? He's like, I know the person who's telling you is not one of your teen hoodlums. I know what's going on here. You've attracted a Terminator and saves the day.

And what I like about this sequence when we're in the garage and they're grappling with good old Patrice is I'm genuinely worried for everyone. And this is something we talked about in seasons one through three since people die all the time in slow horses. Sam could have died in this episode. He's not a main character, but surely could have died. Marcus could have died. Completely. It could have died in that moment, and I wouldn't have been surprised if it was meant to show us how scary Patrice is,

that he could just take a Shirley from Rob's life and leave a whole never-to-be-filled-up again. So, you know. That would have been a really tough beat. I mean, this episode on the one hand, let's Shirley be a stabby little freak, which is, I think, her default mode and really her best self.

Yeah. So if they had also done that but killed her off in this episode, I just would have been really, really torn up by it. So I'm glad she made it through. I'm glad she had her moment to, you know, they at least recover from, if we're going to highlight the bad spy craft of Marcus, Patrice isn't a spy,

but the way he just body checks Marcus through the pain of glass. So violent, yeah. So violent, and it just stops them in their tracks and forces everyone to look at them and draws all the attention to them while he slips off, and then they have to regroup. And then Shirley has to make a call of, do you help up your colleague who just got smashed to the glass?

Do you take off after the guy you're supposed to be following? And, you know, somewhat sweetly, she actually does help Marcus a little bit, at least get back to his feet. But they did not do great. And Patrice just seems so much more qualified than them, on top of being a Terminator figure. Maybe they should have tried being raised from the cradle to be Stone Cold Killers. Maybe then they would have been a little bit better at this.

This is the thing. Look, honestly, I think part of the reason I'm seeing the vision here, I'm seeing Harkness' vision, is like, this is the European basketball model, Joe, is they take these hyper precocious young talented kids. They put a ball in their hands. They have them playing every position. This is how we get Nicola Yokic. You know, like he is raised, maybe not from a terrorist organization, but by being trained from a very young age in a very specific and comprehensive way. Thank you for bringing your NBA skills to bear on this podcast. It's what I'm here for.

I'm excited that here in episode three, we can just officially declare Rob Mahoney, team Frank Hardness. He makes some good points. That's all I'm saying. Team grooming teenage girls and raising his asses for the grader. Okay, all right, all right. Our listener Brad wrote in,

Rossman alluding to this, this is a new segment we're going to do, which is called Spy versus Spy. It comes from our listener, Brad, who wrote in, he's talking about River. At a character level, I chalk this, him being both a good spy and a bad spy. He says, I chalk this up to his belief that he's the only one who can solve a problem. He's a great agent whose Achilles heel is thinking he's 007. He needs to learn to rely his team to truly elevate himself consistently. Anyway, I'm writing to suggest a new weekly section on the Slow Horses podcast called Spy versus Spy, where you and Rob identify both your favorite good moment of Spycraft and favorite bad moment of Spycraft. So we agree that the worst moment of Spycraft is Marcus yelling for Shirley on the street while they're trying to tail. one. Best, are you giving it to The Terminator? The Terminator, Patrice?

I think so. You know, Lamb does some good work in this episode. I will say, as far as the good and bad, David Cartwright is kind of being both things at once in a lot of ways. I think some of that is, as I alluded to before, us, not being sure of his exact motives and exactly where he is mentally. Where I'm landing on is that maybe it's all those things at once, right? Like, maybe in some ways the most terrifying outcome is that he is detached from reality and not exactly sure of what's going on, but that muscle memory is kicking in as a spy. And he is eluding and escaping and getting out on his own and deploying all the skills that he has to try to do the thing that he thinks he needs to do. And in that way, he is being a good spy, even if he doesn't really have a sense of

who is alive and who is dead. But it's just so instinctual for him at this point. Completely. Yeah, exactly. I agree. My best is kind of going to the Louisa Catherine double team, even though they didn't really, really nail their prompt. One of my favorite things that happens on slow horses and Jackson Lamb does this really well and perhaps David Cartwright is doing occasionally is people using your perceptions of them against you. So Louisa running up to play the damsel in distress or Catherine being sort of like the middle age lady who is sort of like lives her ordinary quiet life and what are you even doing here? And Jackson, you know, Jackson's messing with me and all that sort of stuff like that to, I mean, on the one hand,

Emma was going to look dumb regardless because Dave is not in the apartment. But also, I think that the way that Catherine is playing her throughout that sequence is also extremely good. Well, it's the best kind of deception, which is one that was and is true, right?

Like, Dave Cartwright was in her apartment. And so what Lamb is saying is not a lie. And yet she goes there and looks foolish and feels as if she's been played because of just the principal characters involved. All right. Last and Lisa, I didn't prep you for the segment. I mean, so we're not doing necessarily a lambshank of the week.

If I were to, I would give it to, I wouldn't want people to think they have to send a bunch of men to do a woman's shop. I think that's the closest we get to a lamb shank. But one last thing that I did not prep you for, but our listener, Megan, wanted to ask us about the outerwear on this show, which I don't feel is too far off the mark of the ringer's interests,

male outerwear, maybe specifically. I don't know. Mallory and Chris Ryan talked to me a lot about jackets. So I feel like this is a... It's a jacket core company. Yeah. Megan Rice, what do you think they're trying to say about River in the second episode of the season with his fantastic black overcoat?

He looked cool and confident strolling through the French countryside before getting attacked by Hugo Weaving because he has no real situational awareness. One thing I really appreciate in all UK TV shows are how great the coats are, for example, Sherlock Holmes. And I would love a platform to discuss. So I thought maybe we might add coat watch to see. if there's like, you know, obviously Jackson and Lamb's horrid trench coat is part of this.

Definitely. But I also wanted to use this moment to shout out my favorite UK TV coat slash jacket, which is Edress Elba's Luther coat. I don't know. Have you watched Luther, Rob? I haven't seen Luther. So set the image for me. What kind of jacket is he rocking? It's like a gray, wow, this is where I'm going to like reveal that I don't know how to talk about clothing.

This is like a small check tight plaid, gray overcoat. And just something he is really good is like hunching into it. Bennett and Cumberbatch's Sherlock would like use his coat almost like a cape. He was like constantly flourishing it and all the sort of stuff like that, right? Well, that's just a Cumberbatch school of acting too, if we're all being honest. It's true. Idas Elba's Luther was just like, yeah, consistently just sort of like hunched into that coat and just like really showing you a guy who was.

like worn down and doing his best to hold the line for some good in this world sort of thing. So I really like that. You would love Luther if you ever get around. I need to dig into it. It's just one of those that's like always falling through the cracks for some reason. Our producer Kai is chiming in to say not sure anyone has looked cooler than Idris in that coat. That's the thing. It's like how much of that is coat and how much of that is just Idriselba? Well, here. Okay. We've got a few seconds left. Why don't you Google image search Idriselva in this coat just to because I think I did a really bad. of describing it.

Okay, this is definitely working. This is a great coat. This is a great character piece. It's also just Idriselba looking like Idriselba. It can't hurt. It can't hurt. But it doesn't, it isn't kind of a nice zone of like, as you're saying, a little haggard, a little worn down, like a little older in terms of the actual coat and the

material. And it's state than you might expect from someone who looks like Idriselba. And I think that's what kind of works about this river coat is that he does seem like the character who would see a cool coat and be like, I look like a spy in that. I look like a badass in that coat. I should really buy that in the same way that, you know, Emma wants to be a girl boss and wants to wear her boots

and wants to project and insert a certain confidence in herself. And this is where she ends up getting run around. I really love envisioning River both buying that coat and the matching turtleneck. He's like, I'm going to France. I need the coat. I need the turtle neck. maybe they're both cashmere. I need the whole thing.

I'm just going to blow their minds of Levant. And instead, he almost gets his shit rock by a dog. And he hops on this motorized bike that barely goes faster than the dog. That has to be another bit of bad spy craft of the week of trying to jump on what basically is like an e-bike and trying to get away from a sprinting dog.

Tough look. One last thing I'll say about our sort of like worst piece of sky. Well, not our worst, but in the running, river falling through that shed. That was a great special effect. That was a great invisible special effect of having Jack Loudon fall through that thing because... And hilarious. Yeah.

Really good. Throwing on the bird and falling through a roof immediately. Yeah, immediately. I enjoyed that. One last beat on the sartorial front that... Honestly, I'd never really put together until we're talking it through in this episode. The fact that Lamb and Bad Sam Chapman have been meeting in laundromats in retrospect feels like such an obvious tell and mistake that Lamb would not make because that is not a character who watching

his clothes. True. He likes his drip dry wife friends, as we know. He certainly does. So the fact that he is walking into even a coin service laundromat, I would know something is up just based off that alone. I mean, my memory is that Sam had to tell him how to do laundry the first time they met there. So you get the soap. This is detergent. Okay. That does it for season four, episode three, halfway,

the halfway mark. We are devastated to report. We'll be back next speak of course with episode for our 7-Mapope at gmail.com. You guys have been so informative on the accent, snack, coat, timeline, et cetera, front. And keep those coming. We want to hear about the coats. Also obligatory, we did see Marcus's hat, and we will discuss it in length at a later date. Like, that's, we kind of skip by it on clothes watch and jacket watch, but. Yeah, especially for someone who's, like, deeply broke and scraping the bottom of the barrel.

like it feels like he bought himself that hat recently. It's a struggle hat. It's a cop hat. Not to be confused with the Pope's hat. Okay, so thanks to Kai Grady, of course, for his production work always and for agreeing with me about Luther's coat. Thanks to Justin Sales for his work on the speed in general. And we'll be back next week with episode four. Bye.