Barbican Station – Slow Horses Season 6 Episode 4 recap

Spy Write (0:00)

Please mind the gap between the train and the platform. This is Barbican Station.

Hello, and welcome back to Barbican Station. We are back today to look at Episode 4 of Season 6 I'm really excited to welcome back returning MVP, Gary. Thanks, Gary, for talking through all the action in this one, which was a lot of action, actually.

Gary (0:28)

It was. Thank you for the kind words. Nice to be back.

Spy Write (0:31)

So what do you think of this one overall? Have you been enjoying the series so far?

Gary (0:36)

Yes, I've been enjoying it. I know we talked offline about concerns of combining the two books and a change of showrunner. But for me at least, that's my concerns have been mostly unfounded. I enjoyed this episode, although I think it's possibly to date, the most divergent from either of the source books.

Spy Write (0:54)

Yeah, we're starting to see how things are shifting as they're going through the show. Because yeah, I think for sure the first three episodes, we saw a little bit more very close to, you know, I'd say Slough House more so than Joe Country, other than, you know, the addition of bringing in Frank, who is in that one book. But now we're starting to see, yeah, they're kind of shifting things around a little bit as they're doing this mashup.

Gary (1:19)

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I don't think it suffers for it, but it almost feels like an original story, to be honest.

Spy Write (1:25)

Yeah. Well, and I think they've done a good job of picking the things that the best from both books and using those, which I think is, you know, duh, why wouldn't they want to do that? But I think that the choices they've made have been pretty successful as they've been going about that.

Gary (1:38)

Yes, I agree. Yeah, no complaints.

Spy Write (1:41)

So let's talk, I mean, because we get kind of like, again, like they like to do in this show, split things up into like a few different strands. And probably let's talk about some of the other minor strands before we get to the big one, which is River Sit and Cove, because I think that's where we spend a lot of our time. And so I really want to dive into that. But before we get into them, let's talk about a couple of our other groups. And one of the ones that is played a little bit more for Comic Relief, you get the sense they're setting things up here with Louisa and Shirley, Catherine and Moira in this kind of a girl's trip.

Or no, she says girl power, Moira, right? But it's really fun to see all four of them bouncing off each other.

Gary (2:29)

Yeah, it definitely was.

Yeah, I'm not sure about the power bit, but yeah, the four of them, the dynamic together is very good. It's very funny. I think Moira's played to strong comic effect.

Spy Write (2:40)

So they're headed out to this safe house that Jackson Lamb has told them about. And just all of the different kind of discussions they have going on, you know, Shirley is still really angry at Louisa for leaving. You've got Katherine, who is just to her limit. You know, I mean, if you're going to, she's the parent of the group, it feels like with these squabbling children, and eventually throwing her phone out the window. I mean, you have a feeling if she was driving, she'd threaten to turn the car around.

Gary (3:11)

Yeah, for sure. I think she just had enough of the other three of them bickering and decided to take decisive parental action, as you say. It was very funny. Yeah.

Spy Write (3:20)

Well, and the other character note that I love for her is she's got a paper map. You know, of course she has a paper map to track. I mean, I know they're not supposed to be on their phones, but still, of course, Katherine would be the one with the map there.

Gary (3:32)

Yeah. I enjoyed all of the competing arguments about their various map reading qualifications as well.

Spy Write (3:40)

They end up at what is apparently the ritziest safe house ever, which we then later find out is Diana's. Wow, she's got a nice second house. I mean, we see her first house as well, her main home in London, but this one out in the boonies is pretty ritzy.

Gary (3:55)

Yeah. I had some questions around that because neither of those homes are very affordable on civil servants income.

Spy Write (4:01)

Well, maybe she's not only cutting deals for money for the service, but also for her homes there.