The Watch - Trouble at Netflix, ‘Under the Banner of Heaven,’ ‘We Own This City,’ and ‘Slow Horses’ Author Mick Herron

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Chris and Andy talk about some of the troubles at Netflix and some of the belt-tightening the company is doing (1:00). Then they talk about the new detective series ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ (15:39) and the first episode of ‘We Own This City’ (20:41), before Chris is joined by 'Slow Horses’ author Mick Herron to talk about about the television adaptation of his book (43:08). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Mick Herron Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessey. We've got something special cooking on the Prestige TV podcast. I'll be recapping one of my favorite shows, HBO's Barry, every Sunday night with the writer-director star of the show, The Great Bill Hater. We'll talk about the show's Wild Twist and Turns, its special brand of dark comedy, and how it all came together. So on Sunday nights, immediately after a new episode airs, you can hear Bill and I break it all down on the Prestige TV pod. Subscribe on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know about one in three people with Plaxori? may also develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling?

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in the same time zone for the first time in like a month. It's Andy Greenwald. I can't believe you're in this time zone, brother. Am I? Yeah. Here's the thing. Everybody knows you as the consummate professional.

You know what I mean? Which is a huge pivot from my 20s. You're... Fair. Fair, but life is long and full of surprises. Nobody was like, that kid's CR is just like the consummate professional. We always know where he is.

We can count on him. Burst into a bar under a massive cloud of camelite smoke and just start lecturing people on whatever dipset mixtape I was listening to. Well, people need to understand, though, okay, so you on the watch, you on the Ringer NBA show, you on the rewatchables. Like this is late period, mid-period. You're still getting started, but like CR.

You know what I mean? Like this is the new you, this is the professional you've become with the talent you already had. you on the rewatchables is the same bane energy that you brought to new york city in your 20s bane as in tom hardy's bain or desmond bain or yeah yes no not the three-point shooter from the memphis grizzlies that would be flattering no no you were born in the darkness and the chaos like you are a chaos agent that that's the energy if they want to remember the old view and now now you're just a world traveler and you just keep podcasting i want to

Unbelievable. Compare notes on our England trips because Andy was in England, came back on the day after Andy got back. I went to England for work. Because there can only be one of us at any time, like a Highlander. Before we get into that, let's just mention that on today's show, we're going to talk a little bit about Under the Banner of Heaven, the new show that's on FX on Hulu. We'll talk a little bit about any other show that Andy wants to. I know you had 17 minutes of just like safety off chat without me. So I listened to that. That was awesome. But we can chat about winning time. We can talk about Barry. We can talk about whatever you want to talk about. We're going to continue our Saul schedule

where that goes up Monday nights after those episodes. So stay tuned for that. Thank you for listening to our show on Monday. If you're a Saul fan, please listen to the Ringer Prestige TV pod because Joanna and Lindberg do a great job doing a deep dive on the show and they had Michael Mando on this week. And later in this episode, we have Slow Horses author, so the author of the series, Slauhaus series,

Mick Heron, joined me while I was in London. So I hit him up. And we had a normal timed conversation, London-wise, about writing the book series of Slauhaus and then how the show has sort of lived up to his expectations or exceeded them and what it was like to see Gary Oldman and Jack Loudon and everybody bring his characters to light. And maybe we can talk a little bit of Slow Horses because I believe the finale is on this week, right, Andy? I think that's right. Who could say? Because honestly, I also want to talk about we own the city. I want to talk about winning time.

I don't know if you've noticed there's a little bit of TV on. I think that it was the ultimate flex that we collectively took three weeks off during the Noah's Ark segment of the TV Bible. Like, it is unprecedented amount. I did what you did, which was basically like kind of took a little bit. I was so soccer football immersed in England that I kind of took a little bit of break from Peak TV. And if I could stay up late, I would watch it.

NBA at night. But man, like, coming back and just kind of be like, okay, let me make a list of what I need to get through. I think I have like 15 to 20 hours of television to burn through and that would just be kind of getting to where that's taking me back to zero. I mean, it is unprecedented.

We're also like, you and I both think that Pachinko has a shot at being the best show of the year and I'm two episodes behind. And so we will, I will catch up. We will talk about it again on the podcast. Just because it's not getting shine from us. I believe that the finale is.

this week too, right? Yeah, we're just, we are unstuck in time here. It's pretty wild. And I would say also, so again, you know, I was traveling with my family with spring break for school. Shout out to the people on our Facebook group who are like, who, whoever has two weeks consecutive off? Well, thank you.

Proud. Proud to work for a place that lets me go during a school vacation. You were basically working, even though you had a great time because you were doing. It's possible. It's possible to love. you do, you know. It's incredible. I definitely, we spend so much time talking about how global the entertainment marketplace is that I kind of was caught a little flat-footed how challenging it was to keep up on my stories well away. Now, is part of that reason because a family of four

somehow survives with one iPad? Yeah. So was there enough, you know, hard drive space to to really pack the episodes on in place of, you know, Rea and the Last Dragon and Bluey season two? No, so that definitely went out. But also, that was just like, I definitely gamed myself. Like, they're just,

Atlanta's not out there yet. You know, it's just not there yet. The characters are there this season in the UK, but the show wasn't there. So I wasn't able to keep up on that. I'm catching up now. Moon Knight hasn't dropped yet, I think, because I think they're worried

that Oscar Isaac's accident is going to set the special relations between the UK and the U.S. back by a couple centuries. Right. So I couldn't catch up with that. I did. I don't think this is useful for our conversation, but I did preload the old pad with a couple of episodes, actually most of the season of Minks, the Jake Johnson show that we had Jake on to talk about. It's a really good show, really enjoy it, just shouting it out.

Similarly, a show that we've never mentioned, I don't know if we'll be able to circle back to, but our flag means death. Really funny. Yeah. Really good show. And this is where we're at right. now. Just because we're not talking about it doesn't mean it's not good or on our radar. It's just we're just doing triage, man. I also admittedly was distracted by some of the offerings of of British culture, you know, something like Gogglebox, which I was not familiar with, which is a series of

British families watching television. So they just like watch Netflix and then like the show itself is here are these people sitting around a cup of tea watching Harlan Cobins the stranger and be like, Oh, don't go in that room, love. Wait, you watch them watch it? Yeah, that's the show. It's apparently a hit over there. I also... Wait, it's a thing or is it black mirror?

Like, do they know they're being watched? It's like, here are a bunch of British families watching TV and commenting on it. Wow. And, like, they'll just be watching, like, the weather report and be like, oh, she looks lovely and fuchsia, you know? I mean, I'm not mad at it. There was also a lot of shows that I watched. when I was like in between work and going at the dinner and stuff.

That was basically like 65 year old English people buying very modest homes in Spain, you know, and looking at three of them and choosing one. This villa and lovely myelaka. You know, like this, I got really sucked into that. And then the next thing I knew, I was like nine episodes behind on every show I love. You know, like I know you mentioned Russian doll and your monologue. I'm behind on that. I'm already overwhelmed by the fact

that Ozark is coming out on Friday and that's the end of Ozark. I feel like very compelled. I have to watch that this weekend. Do you know what's an interesting genre? I mean, I haven't watched, I should just say, I haven't watched Outer Range yet. I haven't watched Tokyo Vice yet.

I will. I am caught up on Top Chef. Maybe we'll have a moment to talk about that. But you know, it's a genre that I did notice in my brief time actually watching the telly over there? There does seem to be, I mean, reality shows are the same everywhere for the most part. The show you just described,

okay, House Hunters International, but, you know, they're version. versions of shows everywhere. Yeah. But the one thing that I don't think exists in this country to the degree that it seems to in the UK is a show in which a person just buys a farm and then has to go there. Yeah. Like I saw at least three or four shows where someone's like, well, it's a plow, is it?

All right. Do I move the stones? And then like someone comes over and it's just like, yes, you have to move the stones. Like, right. All right. It's going to be a bit of work, isn't it? Moving the stones. So like next week, he moves the stones.

And I did find it pretty calming. But the relationship to the terroir, if you will, is more present. You know what I mean? Like, it was really, it's in the collective consciousness in a way that I don't think it is here. So should we stop talking about watching television or do you want to talk about television? Or would you like to hit some of the Netflix stuff that's been going on since last Thursday? Just briefly, I just think it's just an interesting story for us to keep an eye on. I think we should get into the shows because we have so many of them.

But I'd recommend a Kim Master's piece that was in The Hollywood Reporter today. just kind of opening the hood up a little bit and giving a little more context to the position Netflix finds itself in at the moment, not necessarily in terms of losing subscribers or its place in the marketplace, but we have been having a conversation for a bunch of months about how it just seems like as a service, it was fundamentally changing. And we didn't know the details, but we did point to the end of 2020 when Cindy Holland, who had been in charge of the original programming, was replaced by Bella Bajaria, who had been universal and then came to Netflix

and was there being in charge of the international and unscripted, which had sort of usurped the more expensive traditional, like House of Cards, orange is the new black type of programming that Cindy Holland had championed. And it's just an interesting story. Basically, like it seemed to verify some of the stuff that we had heard as rumors

that there was tension between the executives, you know, that because they were so bullish on the future of growth, the attitude internally was just keep spending, just keep growing. and don't worry about quality control necessarily or being repetitive or what's the end game of the types of shows that we are doing or that we are not doing. And so that there's a lot of finger, clearly there's a lot of finger pointing now about, you know, once it's actually been reflected

in the bottom line where things hurt the most. But also we don't want to get too glib about it because as we're started recording, there's newsbreaking that there are now layoffs. Like people are actually losing their jobs because of the stock tumble and the decisions that led to it. Yeah, I think something that you and I will probably track. for the rest of the year is the possible belt tightening of the sort of televised content industry in general. But specifically, like, with HBO, the Warner Discovery merger,

and this sort of probably different attitude that David Zazlov, who is the Discovery Chief, and his attitude about, like, you know, pocket strings. And whether or not they're going to continue, I mean, obviously CNN Plus was closed after just a couple of weeks of operation. and if Netflix goes into a, hey, do we maybe want to make some smarter, more measured bets and dial back on just the constant, you know, the constant, like leaf blower that we've got going on this homepage, that being said, you know, if their goal is still to create a must-cTV moment or must-cTV show for every month, they're still going to have to make a lot of stuff, you know, and sometimes those shows aren't things that you and I talk about that much like Bridgeton. They've got Ozark, coming out this week. They've got stranger things coming out next month. I'm excited for

stranger things. I hope we talk to the Duffer Brothers when that comes back. But yeah, it'll be curious to see whether or not like this almost unbearable amount of content starts to slow down a little bit, get parceled out in different ways, and what Wall Street's reaction is to all of this. The only other thing I just wanted to flag was, do you remember when we had Scott Frank on to talk about Queen's Gambit? I do, which was like that that bit in the Kim Master's piece about the, about Queen's Gambit being like, what was it called Cindy's folly or Holland's folly? Yeah.

Because that's what I wanted to reference because when we had Scott on, he was basically like, no one really believed in this. And he wasn't throwing shots or shade at Netflix. He was gratefully made it. But he was basically like, I think everyone's pretty surprised that this is doing well. And this article confirmed that. That internally people were totally losing their minds over it, that Cindy Holland was wasting their money, wasting focus on this project that had no.

future and it was a, you know, hugely acclaimed, hugely successful project. And it's precisely the kind of project that they don't really make anymore. I think in 2015 also we would have seen announcements almost immediately after Queen's Gambit became the sensation that it was that like Netflix was in the Scott Frank business, you know, and that they were like, we have three new shows from Scott Frank in development and we can't wait to like see what our like, they used to have in-house creators. They used to have Genji Cohen and like all these people who were, I think that they, they had like relationships with the Finchers and with the people. And it seems like that's going away a little bit. To be fair, the Shonda Rhymes and Ryan Murphy deals are still.

Yeah, but you know what those guys? Like the Ryan Murphy's still like making shows for FX. You know what I mean? Like I don't know. That was the thing. Those deals were really like laying a marker down with the kind of swagger and aggression that as referenced in the Kim Masters piece made Netflix, just painted a giant bullseye on their back, like the rest of the town. dislikes them because basically they were like, I'm taking your future off the board for more money than anyone else can afford to spend with the full knowledge, as you're alluding to, that if things are in first position, they stay in first position.

Right. Or if you want to take this show and just say that it's American crime story, go ahead, or that it's dual a feud or whatever it is. Let's start talking about some shows because there's so many to talk about. And I want to throw out under the banner of heaven first. Because this week I've seen two incredible new shows, and we own the city as one and under the base. banner is another. And I would just say, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, have not a crack hour head.

Is that what they're called? That's what we're calling it. Into the wild, into thin air, and under the band of heaven, like his, his, his three major masterpiece nonfiction works that he's made. I just, it just never got a chance to read those. Um, so going into this with pretty, uh, with no really previous knowledge about what it's about other than a crime in the uh in utah and the the mormon community there and man like david mackenzie directing dust and lance black script starring andrew garfield sam worthington daisy edgar jones gil birmingham who's awesome in this Wyatt russell who's great in this adelae clemens from rectify yeah and i was just like this is this i guess this is the flip side of like all the um

anxiety all this TV produces, but if this is where all the talent is going, and they're pouring this many kind of like creative energies into something like this, it was just like a such an assured show that knew the world it was set in. I was like, man, I can't wait to watch this. Yeah, I've only watched the first. I think two episodes dropped on effects on Hulu. I'm going to make a sports analogy, which I know is weird for the ringer, but I'm going to do my best.

I'll allow it. Thank you. The 2022 Philadelphia Phillies, a team that is already frustrating us. is the sort of thing where before the season begins. I can't even. The emotional real estate, it's just James Hardin lives on one corner. I know. Howie Roseman lives on another corner.

There's just no room for Bryce Harper yet. No, I get it. But what I want to say is that they just made this team and they stacked the lineup, right? With just like, meaty dudes who can mash dingers, just a lot of them. And it was interesting because on paper you're like, Oh, I see what they're doing here. They're only going to field people who can hit home runs. And so we're going to score 30 runs a game.

And then there's a part of it. And you're like, well, that's how you win ball games. That makes sense. I see the heavy hitters here. It's going to be great. Then you actually get on the field and you have to play defense. And other things have to break your way. And often it doesn't work out as it doesn't seem to be working out for our team.

But I think there's relevance here for TV because we're coming off of a time period. where stacking the lineup with proven, if creaking power hitters, was the name of the game, right? You packaged it to get it sold, and it was flashy and shiny, and that at least got it made and helped it cut through the clutter. It's interesting that under the Banner of Heaven, which was a bestseller, this isn't necessarily like the sexiest topic, but it was a best-selling book from a best-selling author.

The screenwriter won an Oscar for writing Milk. Milk David McKenzie a phenomenal Scottish director Hall or High Water and start up yeah

this felt like it felt like the project that we've been seeing we've been seeing falter recently like it's too top heavy it's not actually

going to come off the way that you intended to and now one episode in it might not but my feeling watching the first hour especially the first 15 minutes was one of just like

awe and release and gratitude because I was like, these guys know what the fuck they're doing. Yeah. Like, in such a cool way, it looked beautiful. The camera movements were decisive. It immediately communicated its language of how it was going to tell the story. Andrew Garfield is having a moment, and it's a phenomenal actor whom I think we both

have a lot of time for. But I was just thinking the grace notes of the first 10 minutes when his character, who is a Mormon police detective in, I believe it's the 80s when this is set, or the least early 90s, is playing with his family on like an idyllic weekend evening and gets a call that he has to go into work and there's a horrific crime scene. And the way the show transitions from the beauty of the first moments to the horror of the second through Andrew Garfield's very emotionally pliant face is just artful and lovely. And I, you know, the rest of the hour introduces a bunch of characters and timelines and things that I don't even know if we care

about yet, including a context I know nothing about. And I was just like, these guys know what they're doing. It really feels worked on, not worked over, and I just can't stress enough how nice that is. Yeah, I mean, it looks incredible. I also think that how many, how many crime shows have we seen where a detective has his faith tested, either his faith in humanity or his literal faith in a spiritual being? And I found myself very deeply affected by Garfield's performance. And, you know, like the opening moments of this show after the scene that Andy described, do track, you know, it's a very familiar, like, cop moved through crime scene moment. But the sensitivity that I think is the hallmark of Garfield's work is really on display here.

And just watching him process a crime scene that we really don't see and is only described later. Which is also a really important decision. Yes. Yeah. The camera mirrors Garfield's character's sensitivity in a way that feels really thoughtful. Yeah. So I thought that it did a really good job with inverting or messing around with some tropes. And I also thought the crucial thing here was going to be being able to depict a community that is obviously controversial and is obviously not being shown in the greatest light in this show. But take it seriously.

You know what I mean? Like the hardest thing to do is to not just immediately be like, look at these weirdos. You know, like, what are they doing? And instead it's like everything is very sober, appropriately so. Yet I didn't feel like it was a grind or overly morose. Like it is a procedural. It does move the cases evolving in the first sort of 12 hours that you sort of see in this first episode. I can't wait to watch more of it.

12 hours of the day. In the show world, not 12 hours of screen time. I don't know how many episodes there are in this one. It's a really good time for crime shows because we also have another David Simon show on HBO. Is on HBO Max or is on HBO? I can't remember. It's HBO. We own the city, man. I watched this a couple weeks ago. I watched it again when it aired.

I think watching it again helped in terms of navigating again another show with multiple timelines going, tracking the sort of rise and fall of John Bernthal's cop character, Wayne Jenkins, who's being investigated by federal authorities as well as, I think, eventually the Civil Rights Department of the Justice Department. by a lawyer played by one Mee Mesaucu, who's, people may remember from Loki, but who does an amazing job in this, uh, she's awesome in this show. And this show opens with like basically a five minute

burnthal monologue. And Rinaldo Marcus Green, the director of King Richard is jumping around to like different shots of Baltimore life, kind of to illustrate some of the points or juxtapose with some of the points. And you're just like, I, I, you know, I said this to Bill,

but like, I was like, dude, like, there are just really nobody can do cop stuff. Simon and Pelicanas. Let's, I want to go there, but I do want to start with who you just mentioned. I think this is the first episode of this. I'm going to say something controversial that I haven't thought through entirely, but this is a podcast, so this feels right. I think this is the best directed hour of anything that Simon and Pelacanis have ever done.

I honestly agree with that with no like disrespect to, I'm sure I could go back through and be like, oh, put an ultimate episode of season three of the wire is incredible, but so much of those were very like static coverage, Master 1-1, get in a lot. And that's nothing wrong with that. No, that suited the material. And I think one could. One doesn't even need to make the argument that if the wire had been handed over to showboaty directors, it would have, the series would have suffered.

That wasn't appropriate. Michelle McLaren did a really nice job with the pilot at the deuce. I mean, they've worked with talented people before. But Rinaldo Marcus Green, who I think did a brilliant job with King Richard, which I think was a successful, not successful, really good movie, not to a large degree because of him, because there's an effortlessness to the complexity of what he does. With King Richard, it was like,

this is a very traditional, familiar type of story that's going to hit these beats, but he's going to shoot it in a way that feels like Cinema Verite, it feels like it's discovered and found, and it feels just lived in and natural. It does not feel affected in any way. And it's such a perfect match for a show that is, you know, Every David Simon show trends towards journalism in a way.

And I think actually Pelicanus's literary sensibilities have been a really good hedge on that and helped adapt and change the way that he works in a way that has been really fruitful for both of them. But they're always going to trend towards a little bit of reportage. And Ronaldo Marcus Green's style suits that so perfectly. It doesn't feel hopped up or artsy or showy or all the things that very directed TV can feel like. every movement suits the story, but it feels elevated, you know, it flows, the cuts, the choices. I found it electric. I think the worst criticism that can be levied at Simon Pelicano shows is that sometimes they feel educational, which is good.

Sometimes they're a little pedantic, or they could be, or you feel the tension between getting it right and making it fun to watch. Yeah. This felt electric, even though it's mostly vegetables, if that makes sense. There's a lot when in the conversations that are happening in the Civil Rights Office of the Justice Department, the mayor's office, some of the conversations with the upper brass of the police department. It's very much like here is a download with the state of play of Baltimore Police in 2015 or 17. So it can feel like you're just kind of reading a really good article at sometimes. Like it hasn't really got maybe those characters haven't gotten to character moments, although I do think that there are some. to your point about Rinalda Marcus Green though

this when it comes to the Wayne Jenkins the Bernthaw character to me his character is like a lot about movement it's about a guy who thinks he has the right to walk down any street in Baltimore and do whatever the fuck he wants with his guys and like so many of the interesting kind of moments

cinematically in this episode are following this character as he moves with impunity you know like him moving around around that classroom while he's delivering the speech. Him going on a raid with the gun task force and like the camera kind of like following him as he leans like to his right while he's walking because he has his gun behind his back or, you know.

How many walks up the stairs at the end with his legs splayed as wide as possible like he's Donald Duck? Like he just owns every piece of real estate that he touches. Absolutely. So it's like I think it's like the perfect kind of direction for the action for the character that we're seeing. and, you know, just like, these guys are also, aside from just knowing the the sort of dialect of cop and dialect of Baltimore crime so well,

they're so good at finding faces, and this is probably our buddy Alexa Fogle, you know, it's like finding these faces, finding these actors, finding these characters to play county sheriff, you know, task force guys, who are like tracking a spiked batch of heroin across Baltimore. You know what I mean?

And the two dudes they've got are just like, I'm like, you guys are fucking, this is the perfect two guys. Like I can't even, not just like I can't get over how good the casting is in this show. And Bernthal, like, this might be the perfect Bernthal part in a lot of ways. Like this, I feel like my, I'm interested in my relationship to him as a performer because I first became aware of him on The Walking Dead. which I had a very complicated relationship with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was recapping the first season, and I did not like it, as everybody knows. And his character was one of the most frustrating characters on the show, and I had some transference for us. Like, I don't think I like this guy very much. And then he started working all the time, and I was like, okay, I see why he's working all the time

because he brings that kind of macho swagger to these parts, and, you know, it's very effective in something like Sicario. And then you read interviews with him, and you realize he's like a very smart, sensitive guy, Quaker school alum like us. And he has something that's just surprising and that's kind of interesting. There's like a grace in his brutality, you know. And it is a, again, this is something that Simon and Pelacanos rarely do is right like a star vehicle.

And it's hard to say this is a star vehicle when it is once again a show about the deep-seated rot within a police department, within a city. But he is the linchpin of this show in a way because he embodies all of the thematic issues. It's a really bravura performance. It's really compelling to look at. Yeah. And in the same sense that maybe this is like Apex Bernthal, they also found the perfect curveball Josh Charles performance. Let's talk about this. You were tweeting with each other.

No, I mean, I think I made a joke about like the early image of Josh Charles hanging on to his own bulletproof vest to just be like me at the end of the pandemic. I can't remember the joke I made. And he was like, I hope you like the show. And I do. And I also like Josh Charles in this show who plays this scumbag named Daniel Herschel who like everybody when they're like, oh, who's the dirty cop in Baltimore? They're like, this guy.

Like, it's definitely this guy. It's really interesting. People have said this and written about it more eloquently than we'll be able to talk about here. But the show is really, it's not a corrective to the wire, but it is an interesting descendant of the wire. Yes. because there's no version of watching the wire where you're like, this is copaganda.

I mean, that is not what that show was. No, not at all. Simon has a lot of time and respect for people who have worn the badge and done it well and with respect. And Ed Burns, who's a longtime collaborator who's on this as well, was a detective that Simon met when he was embedded with the police department all those years ago. He's also, you know, hopefully, I think this is his project and I think it's worked, you know, just brought a great deal of empathy to all the players on all the players on all those years. the sides of a misbegotten national project of policing in the drug war and maintenance and survival of cities. So all of that is to say the teeth around what the power imbalance in cities has, they've never been sharper, I think, than they are in this show. It is absolutely a show that

is 2022 about events that are, you know, based on a nonfiction book seven to ten years ago. Well, you know, and it's interesting that you bring up the wire because I think it would be easy, and I'm not above it myself to be like this is kind of a appendix to the wire, if not season six. But the wire did not end being like, things are going to get better, you know? No, it definitely did not. They did not. They did not get better. But what the wire did do is something that I think we always miss is just the way that the camera entered into the rooms of people on all the levels of,

a project like a city. And this goes into some different rooms. And it also goes into the suburbs and counties and the relationship to the cities. And it has a very contemporary view of what the drug war means. Because one of the other things about the wire that's worth mentioning,

a lot of the reporting that fueled the show, which aired in the early 2000s, was a decade old already. Like the towers, right, that were the stage for so many of those first few seasons with the barkstales. They were knocked down, I think, in the 90s.

I remember learning this when I was covering the show. So it was backwards looking in a way about the drug war. I mean, a lot of it was always relevant. This feels much more of the moment in terms of the spike in opiate abuse and heroin and fentanyl and also just the way not just policing is done now, but also the way we look at policing. There's some really interesting stuff in the first episode where an arrest is abandoned because of community flashing cameras at someone and phones, basically. Last thing I just want to say is a recommendation for the show, which I just can't wait to watch all of.

You mentioned Wunmi Masako at the beginning. She's an English actress. She's great in this role. She smiles so much in one particular scene when she's introduced to her new, by the way, extremely handsome work associate in the Civil Rights Department. Yeah, Ahmed.

I was so struck by that scene in the choice, because it's not just that smiles, you know, aren't always freely offered in David Simon shows. I just loved the, character choice, that this was a woman who works in some tough areas and has to have some tough conversations and is comfortable going toe to toe with the mayor. But she was happy to meet somebody. I don't know why I'm harping on it. I just thought it was like a beautiful, interesting choice.

Well, I think that her character also has a very like pragmatic view of what she does, which is like, I think that there's some notes in there about like, well, well, you know, it's not like Trump's going to win. So we'll probably still have some kind of remit. But they were talking about how often the mayor or the governor or whoever who brings you in to fix a system is rarely the mayor or governor who then gives you permission to do so when you've been like, okay, here are the issues. And by the way, that may be doubly or tribly so in Baltimore because then I was Googling like how much of this is real, how much of this is fictionalized. And I'm like, who's the mayor of Baltimore? And I'm like, oh, the mayor of Baltimore is a 38-year-old guy who was on the city council.

I'm like, that's wild. Wait, how long has he been mayor? Oh, okay, two years. And you see like the timeline of mayors and the previous two mayors were mayors for like, two years and eight months. Yeah. And that it's just like, reason for leaving office, indicted. Yes. Indicted. Like, it's a complicated place.

I think we should also just note because we are talking about the wire and we're talking about David Simon, we own the city is show run by George Pelacanos, who had worked on the wire and has been on this podcast two or three times is one of our great favorite writers, crime writers and also people. And he co-ran the deuce with David Simon and they co-wrote and developed the show. George Pelican is still one of the all-time. refusals to hang out with us. Wait, let's end on that.

I just want to say, give him some shine because he deserved it. This is his first solo show running, even though he's working with his team. I think he got the wrong pod, bro. I don't think anybody has ever been. We shine up George Pelagano. I know. I just want to be like, there was a great profile of him in the Times where he's just like, I'm so happy I get to do this.

Like, I love doing this. It was just beautiful. He loves making stuff. And this is his show. He's show running it. Yeah, all time. We've already mentioned this, but we should do it again, that we went to his reading of Drama City, his 2004 novel.

It must have been March. It was like March Madness of 2004. And we went to his reading at Barnes & Noble. And we went up to when we got our book signed. And we were like basically like, do you want to hang out and go watch tournament basketball? And he was just like, no. He looked at us kindly with a smile. He saw the cloud of camel smoke that followed you like pig pen in the fucking Charlie Brown comics.

And he was just like respectfully young men. men, I will retreat to my room and watch the same game, but with a single Heineken and slippers on. And we were like, that's cool, grandpa, and now dream. I dream of a night like that. What could be better? But I told you, right, that, like, I've mentioned before, like, I told him in that autograph line, I said this day when he was on the pod, so people know this. But it means a lot when people do stuff like this.

I told him that I had written a novel that was coming out, and he wrote in my Drama City book, like, best of luck with the book, George. I think about that all the time. Yeah, to me, he just wrote smoking kills. He's just like, good luck with all of that. Hey, before we get into my Mick Haren interview, do you want to just, I don't know where you're at with slow horses, but I would love to just hear any thoughts you have before we jump in.

I obviously love this show. Can I just pull a ticket to talk winning time? Maybe we just revisited on Monday then since we're a couple days removed from an episode that I thought was the season finale because they only sent promos through eight, but they're two more. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we can talk, so we'll revisit on my way. No, I mean, like, I feel like with winning time, I am now too much in the zone where, like,

I'm, like, analyzing their, like, Bill and I were talking about this, but, like, their basketball reference page from that season and, like, kind of doing a lot of historical fact-checking. Yeah, right. So, I would love to hear with somebody who is not doing that thinks of the show. I mean, I don't mean to be this guy, but I, or the Victorian new critic, but I'm like, fuck it, this show is entertaining as shit. I just really love watching it. And I don't feel troubled by the morality of it. Maybe I should.

Maybe I need to give that more consideration. I'm not troubled by it at all. We do this when we make television shows to everyone. No one is ever accurately portrayed on television, even in the most generous portrayals. But I think more often than not, we have had TV shows about morally suspect people or people who have fallen, like all the tech bros and bro-eseses,

Elizabeth Holmes who have been recently on our screens, right? So we're not, we don't really get, we're not that worried about what the dude from WeWork feels about Jared Lito's performance, right? Like, he's not getting the same ink that a beloved icon like Jerry West is getting for his complaints. I don't know. I'm, I feel bad that he's so upset and Kareem seems pissed. But, like, you know, if you have the choice for the true story of the legend, you print the legend,

and this is literally that. This is the stories that it could have been. Can I guess your favorite part of the show? We were just talking about The Wire. I do want to shout out Wood Harris, who is incredible on the show. As Spencer Haywood, yeah. As Spencer Haywood.

That is just such a low-key, incredible performance. What is my favorite part? The Let's Brody Siegel triangle. The love triangle between those three? Yeah. Well, also in the Philadelphia of it, because two of the three of them are from Philips. really. I know, which I didn't realize. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it all works out, right? They all stay friends.

Absolutely. And the Lakers just go on. There's two episodes left. That's what I said. So slow horses. Okay, slow horses, yeah. I think we only talked about the... I've not watched the finale. Okay. So I think we only talked about like the first episode generally. You know, this is a very, very faithful adaptation. As I talked about with Mick a little bit, you know, this is probably if you were a novelist, the dream. You know, they both cast amazing actors who look and feel like the characters in your book. And then they do a very, very faithful rendering of your work so that you can just feel good about it. He was talking about how basically there's the version of this where you get deeply involved.

And you basically make a condition of buying the rights that you use him as either a screenwriter or whatever, an executive producer with some creative input. or you can just say, give me the check and I'll see you guys at the premiere. And he's like, I got to do the exact middle version, which was they said, here, let's do this. I got to give some notes and talk a little bit about,

you know, what I thought things should look like and feel like. But they also had like an incredible creative team, you know, writer Will Smith and obviously the cast to kind of just go through and bring this all to life. And in a time when I feel like a lot of stuff is like, very weighed down, you know, funny shows that aren't that funny, serious shows that are too serious. This was just like the perfect, I mean, I mentioned Dustified a couple of times.

I just find that this show has just tonally so right up my alley. I feel the same way about the tone and the cast and the setting. I mean this with love when I say that I find it refreshing how little this show asks of me. Yeah. That could be a backhanded compliment. I don't intend it to be. I just mean there's a confidence, a quiet, assuredness in every piece of it, and it doesn't get too bothered with itself. You know, I never watch this show, which, you know, I assume if you're still listening, you're vaguely aware of the plot points, but it's a spy show set in London about disgraced spies who all worked for a supremely disgraced spy, played by brilliantly by Gary Oldman.

The show never even gives you a moment to be like, is that spy, is that proper spy craft or what's actually going to be? going on here, it just moves. And I think the only bump that I've had wasn't one of disappointment or dismay. It was more of surprise. You'd read the book before watching the show. I was really surprised that the series, the first series, is essentially one night, that it is an uninterrupted action. You know, I thought we'd be settling in with these people. But in fact, there's an inciting event, there's a kidnapping, and then there's a race to find the kidnapped person. And it's all happening. It's not in real time, but it's awfully close to it. which is an interesting way to meet characters.

And so if it paused... But even... I don't even feel like they're that bothered to make sure we know that. You know what I mean? I don't feel like they're like, oh, just we're really stressing the fact that this is like 24,

that this is like all in one night, you know? No, and it's also, you know, it's also early days, but it's like Gary Oldman, an icon, is playing a character who is already an icon. Like, there isn't any, at least in the early going, and he like, let's unpack this guy and see how he ticks. Let's follow him home for one night and understand his trauma or his damage.

I mean, he is just playing the entire cast crew and plot like a fiddle. You know, he is just dining out. I guess we did see him dine out on some cold takeaway noodles. But other than that, he's dining out on every scene. And it's fun. And it doesn't really need to be much more than that, at least in the early going. I guess what I keep feeling like I'm being critical. I don't intend to be.

I just find it kind of refreshing. I think that the sensibility of it and there is a lightness to it, even though everything is rain soaked and smoked on and full of double crossing and betrayals and false red herrings and stuff like that. Like it still feels very light and breezy and that it's always a pleasure to watch. And I think, yeah, you know, we should. Let's remember that. I think it's not just us, but all of us, like with this deluge of television, like,

each show that you're watching, they don't all have the same goal. and they don't necessarily need to be covered in the same way. And it's also worth considering where the floor and ceiling are for them. And we started by talking about Under the Banner of Heaven. And that really is like the heart of the Phillies lineup, two true outcomes. It's home run or strikeout. I don't think there's a version. A bad version of Under the Banner of Heaven would have been like a kind of turning this off after 25 minutes.

Not just that. What is a mediocre version even look like? What? Like, what is a C plus version of a show? I mean, it's not something that you're going to stick with for six episodes because it's not really worth it, right? It has to be exceptional or nothing. And Slow Horses isn't bothered at all by trying to solve societal problems or comment on the state of the world today or whatever. It's just like, yeah, we're going to have a lark in the spy space and we're going to cast the shit out of it.

And we're going to have a lot of Apple money to actually shoot in London on streets that you and I once trod. I trod them last week. I was walking right by Regions Park. I was like, holy shit. Did you go in and get a lanyard? Yeah, it took a while for my identity to be verified. So why don't we wrap it up there and go to my interview with Mick, Herron, who's the author of the novel series that Slow Horses is based on.

And then Monday, Andy and I will be back after Better Call Saul airs. And we could chat about that. And then maybe we can also jam some Barry Atlanta and winning time, some combination of that talk in there. That sounds good. And then I know, too modest to say it, but he's just going to pound moon night the rest of the day. Sure. That's exactly what I'm going to do.

He loves it. I love British culture. Chris loves it. That's right. Just one last taste. Thanks to Kyle McMullen for producing us at a normal time. We will talk to you guys on Monday night. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably

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Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms apply. Mick Herron, thank you so much for joining me today on the Watch podcast. I'm a huge fan of the Slauhaus books. And obviously I'm a huge fan of the Slow Horses adaptation that's currently on Apple. Mick, I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about life before these books, though, for the watch listeners who are mostly debased American television fans. What sort of, you're from Newcastle originally, right? That's right.

That's where I grew up. Newcastle is in the northeast of England. And I grew up and went to school there and left to come and live in Oxford. Well, I came to study in Oxford, and I've never left Oxford. I've been living here ever since. And did you have like sort of a lifelong affinity for espionage fiction or spy novels? I mean, was it something that had been kicking around in your head for a long time? Or was this something that was more of a like later in life kind of realization that you wanted to write books like this?

I think probably more than latter. I've always been a fan of thriller fiction and crime fiction in general, which includes a lot of spy fiction. And, you know, a writer like LeCarray is obviously one of those writers who bridges the gap between genre fiction and literary fiction. So I've always been an admirer. My initial forays into writing thriller fiction were more along the individual gets sucked up into international event kind of thing

and then private eye novels. So the spy novel came a bit later. I think Slow Horses was my sixth novel, if I can't correctly. And I think by that time, I had just decided I wanted to do something. I'd kind of taken little steps into that world, a little bit in my first novel, perhaps,

but mostly in a novel called Reconstruction, which is my fourth book. I decided to go in for it full on without six books, at which time my career, if you can call it that as a writer, had become established as being not quite non-existent, but I didn't have a huge readership.

I wasn't in bookshops. I was in libraries. I had some readers. I had a very good American publisher, so I was probably better known the States than I was over here. But being a writer, I wasn't sort of impacting on my life in any way. Right. Publicly, you know, I was working away after my day job, but I wasn't known particularly

as a novelist at all. And the reasons for writing spy novel at that time were partly I wanted to get a little bit more political, I suppose. Partly, I was aware that the world was changing. I mean, I've been, along with millions of other people in London on the day that the bombs went off in 2005. And that made me think about these kind of events, you know, the events that are the territory of modern spy fiction, you know,

the kind of thriller, a terrorist attacks a spy. And I realized that I wanted to sort of write about that but from the point of view of, you know, people who were present rather than totally involved if you put the distinction. Sort of just adjacent to the action

almost, right? That's right, which is why my my heroes in Veritcom. My protagonists are not, at least not initially ever totally involved in what is going on around them. You know, they're forbidden from taking part. Obviously, they always do end up taking part in what's going on. But I wanted them to be people who were frustrated by event and feel thwarted in their careers by not being James Bond essentially, by being, yes, hero adjacent.

I like that phrase. Right. Right. You know, you mentioned LeCarray, and that's obviously, I think, for the person most people think of when they think of spy fiction, and he had this personal background or personal attachment to the world of espionage, which you don't, I assume, or at least you can't tell me about it without having to kill me. I was curious, though, you know, even for myself, if I ever even think of a story that, whether I'd write it or not, I just imagine the world of espionage is a very daunting thing to dip your toe into, and that you did you have a lot of like hang-ups about, am I getting this right? Am I getting this wrong? How would this work? Where is this thing?

Like all of the sort of practical matters. Did you ever find that to be a hurdle you had to get over to start writing? Very much so. I think that's what stops me from launching myself into this part of my writing career earlier because I always felt that, you know, I didn't have any special knowledge. I didn't have any more awareness of geopolitics than any, you know, newspaper reader.

I'm not very good at, research, which is to say I'm quite lazy about it. I don't like doing research. So I didn't want to kind of rebuild myself as someone who knew a lot about these things. And so I simply took what I'd acquired from, you know, having been a reader, having been a TV watcher, having been a moviegoer, all the most of my life, and married them to a bunch of characters who weren't actually in the front line. So they were not, they didn't have access to any of the kind of the technology. that you'd have to write about now if you were to write an accurate up-to-date description of how the espionage business works. I assume these days it's mostly electronic surveillance of one

hundred and up. I don't know much about that. But I do know that how much you're allowed to make up these days. I remember talking to somebody who knows a lot more about these things than I do, another writer. And he said something along the lines of if the hardware exists, the software will be available. If you've got a smart fridge, then it can be used to spy on it, that kind of thing. Right. So you just need to know, I discovered, once I sort of got my confidence up a bit, you just need to know a tiny little amount about how these things work, and you can incorporate it and make it seem plausible. It doesn't have to be authentic in a novel. It just has to seem plausible. And there are, what would you say, especially, I'm sort of early in the series,

I'm on the third novel of the book series. But for you, I mean, do you see pieces of you in the books? Do you see pieces of your experiences in London? Do you see neighborhoods or streets you used to walk down or still do? Or maybe even Chinese takeouts that you model the Chinese takeout on? Definitely in terms of location, yes. And these streets around which these books are largely set is where I used to work. I mean, that's where it came from.

As I said, I'm sort of research averse. I tend to use whatever is nearest, you know, the least effort involved. That's what I like. So I work near the barbican, so I introduced the barbican into the books. And I used to walk past this building that I turned into Slan House every day on my way to and from work. So they became the locale for setting the characters in. The characters I make up, but any time you're inventing a character, and I do tend to write from the point of view of the characters that I write about,

then you necessarily incorporate aspects of your own character, if you're playing off them rather than using them for your cause. You know, I will think of, you know, how I feel and use the exact opposite, for instance, in a character, perhaps. Yeah, but mostly it's feelings about London and those streets and so on. Yes, they all come from my own experience, really. I mean, the narrator in these books is as much a character as, say, Jackson Lamb or River Cartide. That's what I was going to ask about. That narrator is the one character who doesn't quite make it into the show, right?

That's right, yeah. But that narrative voice is something that's been acquired rather than a kind of natural expression of how I am and how I feel about things. It seemed to me the appropriate tone of voice to use while telling these stories. Do you ever personify that narrator or think about him or her as a person? No, I don't know. That's interesting. It's never occurred to me. It is simply the voice I kind of slip into when I sit down at the laptop and start work. I suppose I'm notice when, I hope I notice when I hit the wrong notes while using that voice and delete them, you know, but otherwise, no, I mean, I don't think about it in the same way as I do think about, say, Catherine, when I'm writing from her point of view. Right. That's, that's an actual adoption of a point of view, whereas the narrative voice is simply tone. It's just going for the right tone. You know, that narrator that we're talking about is, it's strange because it's, it's,

cinematic without being, I think, easily translatable. And by that, I mean, you'll do things like, I believe Dead Lions opens with the cat walking through those Lough House offices as like to introduce these different characters and the geography of the office building, which is a very cool idea that you, as a reader, can see as you're sort of following this cat around. But I imagine would be, if you were making hard, fast choices about what two and two not include a television show, the cat might go first, you know? Like, Absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely. The narrative voice, I think the only way you could maintain that

or include that in the show would be to have a voiceover. Nobody wants a TV show with a voiceover. Oh, a talking cat, my... My minute talking time, but no, it was the first thing to go. Obviously, it never even occurred to me that it was being jettisoned, really. I mean, it's just natural. And, of course, a lot of the way I write is interior voices, So ways of delivering, you know, both the information and the emotion contained in that new ways have to be found of doing that.

But this is what TV writers do. This is what screenwriters do. It's not a skill I have. I mean, I'm a prose writer. But it's been fascinating watching the writers. And I've worked with the mood finding ways of doing that. Yeah, so tell me a little bit about the collaboration. I would imagine that there was probably, you know, a late.

at Gary Oldman playing Jackson and Jack Loudon playing River. And I'm sure you were excited to get started. But did you feel any territoriality? Is there any kind of sort of creative possessiveness that came over you when you first started getting into the idea of this first book being adapted? I expected that to happen, at least to some degree. And I've never worked in a creative fashion. I've never worked collaboratively before.

So I was slightly, you know, not daunted perhaps, but interested to see how that was going to work out. It's been a fascinating and really grand experience for me. What happened was I've been in the writer's room a bit. The writer's room will run generally for about three weeks per show. I mean, per book, I suppose, since the best we're putting it. During those three weeks, the action of the novel is broken down into six episodes. and those episodes are broken down beat by beat, essentially, and certainly seen by scene.

And I've been there while that's being done. I've been there for a large part of that process. So a lot of that is the problem solving. How do we get this information across to an audience rather than who aren't just reading it off the page? That kind of thing. And we decide, you know, who's going to which characters have to go and how we can use things in a slightly different way.

Because it's a different grammar of storytelling, you know, on-screen storytelling than on the page. So all those kind of problems come up and they all get, or I hope, all get solved one way or the other. That's the part of the process that I've been in. And I found it really energizing because I've been in a room that with people discussing the books

and discussing these characters and giving them real weight, you know, giving weight to the character's opinions and to the characters' experiences and treating the material with enormous amount of respect. Now, I've always thought that as a novelist, you know, if you're approached by TV, film company or whatever, you have two choices. You either say, okay, give me the money,

here's the book. Right. Or you say, okay, I want to be involved in every stage. And I was kind of midway between those two. I would have, you know, if I'd been given an ultimatum, I would have said, okay, I'll take the money on I'll walk. But they wanted me to be involved. And they've been really respectful of me and the books, and far more so than I would have, you know, required or expected. But I've made really good friends while working on this show. I've always come out of the writers' room feeling really energized and wanting to get on with my own work. And I don't feel proprietorial about the books that they're working on. I feel proprietary about the book I'm writing now. Right. The work I was doing this morning before talking to you. That's mine. Nobody goes anywhere

near that until it's finished. But, you know, slow horses and dead lions, both of them were written more than a decade ago now, at least a decade ago I was probably finishing dead lions. I've written much since, and, you know, they're kind of in my rearview mirror in a way. I mean, the characters are still there, but they've moved on a bit and they're doing different things now. And I'm happy for, you know, the necessary rewriting that is required when you're translating something under the screen. That can be done. You know, we're making a different product here. I don't like the word product particular.

But that's essentially a TV show is being made out of the book. And that's got to be done differently. What amazes me looking at it now is how faithful it is. It's incredible. It's extraordinary. It's not so much the plot, although the plot is very, very close to what I wrote. That is the characters, it's the tone, it's the feel. They've got the look exactly right.

And they didn't just go the extra mile. They ran the extra marathon, the producers in making this. They got permission to use the outside of the actual building that I walk past every morning. When they say, this is Sloughhouse. That is the building that I decided to put Sloughhouse in, they changed the frontage of the retail shops on the ground floor, because I made up the Chinese restaurant. Right. But they altered the frontage so that there's a Chinese restaurant just for the purposes of the show. So they did all these things and they used the locations

that I mentioned in the book almost all the time. Where they haven't done that, they've sort of upgraded. My book kicks off in Kings Cross. They use Stansett Airport, which is a much more, you know, a huge opening for a TV show. And they've done everything with the utmost good intentions, all of which have worked out fine. And I'm absolutely thrilled at. I'm actually staying in Kings Cross right now and I was walking through the train station

and I was doing the thing that River winds up. What is it? Blue shirt, white jacket. Yeah. Yeah. I can never admit by myself. When you, I mean, did you get a chance to visit the set at all? Oh, yeah, yeah, a number of times. And in fact, if you watch,

Episode one, around about 33 minutes in, I think it is. You'll see me and my partner coming out of that Chinese takeaway just before the carteret walks in. A lot of the nuance of my performance was lost in the editing of that. Well, I mean, they don't understand your work. But, you know, when you're looking at the odds on who's going to be the next James Bond, I feel like I've left my marker there. It's between you and Idris.

Yeah, I think it's pretty close. And maybe Jack as well. Was there a little bit of, did it almost feel like you were in a museum to your earlier... I mean, I guess it's sort of strange. It must be strange to be a novelist and be in a physical manifestation of your imagination, even get to

be a part of it in this case of the Chinese takeout. It is. And you know, I kind of feel like I ought to really sit down and think about this harder than I have done so far because it's all being just sort of a day to time. This is what's going on. It is extraordinary.

I think I'm going to look back on this and realize it's a lot more extraordinary than it feels. It's like part of that is that, you know, I had my first meeting with Jamie Lawrenson from Ciesel, who's one of the exec producers, and they, you know, Seesaw made this. More than eight years ago now, I'd only published two of the novels. And so it's been a long process coming up to the screen. And it's always been a kind of background noise going on that. Yeah.

So, you know, I've known for some years that Gary Oldman was going to be up there on the screen for a long time before it was announced. seems like everything that becomes public. I've already got well used to by retirement we've reached that stage. And so it's just a kind of day by day step by step process. And, you know, my life has been going on. I've been writing the books. I've been doing other things. So it's almost as if, you know, if I'd woken up one morning and just been presented, hey, we've made this and I've shown slow horses, I'd have been knocked out and I'd been through a walk. But because it's all been this kind of long, slow process, which has been very enjoyable for me. I mean, it's been

very difficult for people making it because we have COVID apart from anything else. I've just been expecting everything to happen, if you like. Yeah. So it hasn't really hit me. I haven't really had that impact. There have been a couple of moments where I thought, oh, wow, this is happening, finding out that Gary was going to play Jackson Lamb. Yeah. Yeah. It's one moment, certainly. I think being on the set the first time and seeing Slauhaus, seeing the interior of Slauhaus was another because that really did feel like they have taken something out of my head

and they've built it. It's extraordinary how quickly you get used to this sort of thing that's the astonishing thing. We're all very adaptable when it comes to these kind of surprises. Does it make you revisit those earlier novels? I mean, did you go back and reread them before the writing process of the show began to sort of kind of refresh,

not refresh your memory, you wrote them, but kind of interrogate them in a different way? Refresher, my memory was very necessary. Because, you know, it is now so long ago, it's not so much the distance in time, it's what I've done in between, you know, having written several other books, I can't remember which is in rich books sometimes,

certainly in terms of, you know, the character into play. I'd like to pretend that I went back and sort of reread them with a more critical eye, but in fact I would sort of flick through the book on the train on the way to the meeting of the writers' room. And I did find on many occasions that the guys in the room knew. They knew more than you did.

They were coming to fresh. I was trying to remember from a long distance. But essentially, because I'm looking at, in a way I look at it, it's the kind of ongoing project, you know, the series of books, these are characters that I will be continued to work with for a bit yet, I hope. it almost feels like the divisions between the books sort of start to be artificial to me.

Yeah. My 10 years with these characters, my 12 years with this character. You know, because I was going to ask, we talk about crime fiction a lot on this podcast and often what will happen is, you know, especially in a series, a writer will sort of write the first novel without necessarily knowing they're going to write a second novel and a third novel and a fifth novel in a series. And then, you know, you can sort of see them kind of disqualify. decide in that second or third novel, this is what this kind of book is going to be. And this is

like, I sort of now have a feeling for the rhythm. Do you remember when you were writing slow horses thinking of it as a standalone necessarily? Or do you, do you remember like that sort of feeling as you were starting to write like, oh, I think that this, I have something here. I think I want to keep writing about Jackson and River and, and Catherine for a while to come. I absolutely did have that feeling. I mean, when I started writing it, it was simply, you know, the next book I was writing. It was a standard, and I'm not even sure I thought of it in those terms, but it was simply a book that wasn't in my series because I was writing about this private eye called Zoe. Most of the time I was writing it, I tend to have, you know, one and a half-half ideas at any

given time, the idea for the book I'm writing, and half an idea for what I'll do next. And the half idea, when I was writing Slow Horses was another Zoe book. But it was, and my idea for the ending of Slow Horses, it's the only time I've ever radically altered a book. I don't plan them in great precision, but I have an idea of where I'm going with it. And I had an idea for the end, which would have pretty much put page to that being a sequel. And as I got near the end, I thought,

do you know what, I like these characters? I'm going to change that ending. Interesting. And keep them going. And I think subconsciously, perhaps I knew that because if you look at the first 60, 70 pages, there's a lot of work went into each of the individual characters, providing a kind of backstory,

which would have been quite a waste, I think, if it was a single novel. Yeah. So I think some part of me knew that this was going to continue, but I didn't consciously make that decision until, I don't know, about two-thirds of the way in. I just thought, no, I'm sticking with these people. I want to write more about them. So you've got a new novel in the series coming out in May, I believe,

and you said you were writing this morning, so I assume you're continuing to work on these characters in this story. The book I'm writing at the moment is non-series. Oh, okay. But I was, there's this sort of, you know, because I couldn't find it on the internet. Now I'm wondering if it's apocryful, but there is this LeCarré story about how once he saw Tinker Taylor,

that Alec Guinness was always in his head when he was writing Smiley after that, and that it sort of spooked him a little bit. And I was curious whether or not the same thing had happened with Oldman with you. Not so far. I know that story about LeCarray as well. I'd be hard-pressed to,

find a text for it, but it seems to be generally accepted. Yeah, let's go with it. You can see why, let's go with it. With Gary, I don't know. I mean, it wouldn't hurt me. I don't think if it did. I have written an entire novel, Bad Actors, which is out next month, knowing that Gary Oldman was going to be playing.

And certainly, during the writing of that novel, I visited the set many times and saw him doing it and saw, you know, clips of him. It's very different from watching somebody do something on a set, and then seeing the film of it afterwards. Yeah. There's a particular... It takes and, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So I'd seen all that sort of stuff, and it didn't really seem to affect me. I write to the voices in my head, mostly. I mean, I have the character of voices. I've rarely had a strong visual image of what these characters look like. Oddly enough, the one character that I... Well, one of the very few characters

that I did have a strong visual image of, Jack Love, fits that image to a T. Yes. Like he walked out of the page. With Jackson, I mean, I've probably no expended time on physical descriptions of him. It's more often saying what he's up to than what he looks like. But still, it's just what he says.

It's the voice that I go for. And Gary has that voice perfectly. So, you know, I don't think it would affect me at all if I were to find that same thing that we know we've established as a fact that affected Le Carick. If that affected me too, I don't think I would worry about it. It's just so fascinating. I remember as a reader, I always remember reading

No Country for Old Men, the Cormac McCarthy novel. And I think I was three quarters of the way through it when the trailer for the Cohen Brothers movie came out. Oh, yeah. And immediately, I was just, I was like, well, those are those guys. This is the most perfect troika of casting I've ever seen Bardem is Chagru

and Tommy Lee Jones is the sheriff and Josh Brulin is the fugitive and that was beat for beat to the book wasn't it? Well the book is basically a script where something happens off the page which you don't really expect so much in a novel

and that happens off screen as well. Yeah, it has him arriving at the shootout after it's already happened. It's a brave moment and to have them do that in the movie that's exactly one of the things you think that producers would say, well, that worked in the book, obviously, but we're going to have to show it, you know,

because this is a big, dramatic moment. But they went with it. That was quite laudable, I think. But it was interesting because when I, as soon as I saw that trailer, I couldn't get those guys, their faces were attached to those. And I wonder whether as I continue reading the series, if I'll start to see Gary, but there are worse people to see, I suppose,

when you're visualizing something in your head. What's your experience been watching it? Have you been watching it week to week? Did you watch the series all in a bunch? I haven't been watching a week to week I went to an all-day screening I saw all six episodes in a day and a break for lunch in the middle

with the other writers with the writers I should say and some of the producers and that was great it was the first time many of us there apart from the producers had seen the whole thing

and that was they hadn't done the credits sequence yet but we saw everything else and we were with the director who talked us for you a couple of interesting bits and no it was a great experience because it made it and I sort of

communal experience for those of us who couldn't work into it to see it that way that was great fun and I haven't been watching it week to week since so I will watch it again

at some point at some point altogether when I was at the premiere where they showed the first two episodes but actually all I've seen of it so far

has been on big screens and I was at a cinema for the screening and then yeah it's a pretty unique experience most people are watching on their laptops or their televisions

yeah but stuff like the opening sequence of the airport It works really well on the big screen. It's not just singing and you bond maybe or something. Oh, yeah. It's fun and stuff.

Yeah, it's that I said when it first came out, I was like, this is one of the more thrilling, like sort of first scenes of a series that you're going to see in a long time. Well, Mick, I won't take up any more your time. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. I had such a great talk with you. And the show is amazing, but the novels are even better. So people should check them out.

And you've got a new one coming out next month. Thank you so much, Chris. It's been great. I've really enjoyed it. Take care. Thank you again. You too, cheers.