Apple TVSlow Horses has always been the weird black sheep of contemporary spy thrillers. It’s fitting, considering the Apple TV+ series is about a group of MI5 failures who are shuttled off to Slough House, the dusty, forgotten department overseen by Gary Oldman’s washed-up spy Jackson Lamb. And like the dejected agents of Slough House, Slow Horses is all about upending expectations. What appears to be a show about the tedium of being a pencil-pusher at an elite agency steadily transforms into an offbeat marriage of a high-stakes Mission: Impossible movie and an intricate John le Carré novel. It’s serious, it’s complex, but it’s also not above a good fart joke (something that happens more often than not, with Oldman’s frequently flatulent Jackson Lamb).But Slow Horses is more than just the “Gary Oldman farts” show as it has been facetiously (though not inaccurately) dubbed. Its genius is in how it juggles its knotty, winding storylines with its comedic overtones, all the while upending our expectations for a spy show. Some seasons have done this better than others — the weakest seasons of Slow Horses amp up the comedy too high, or overcomplicate the twists to the point of confusion. But thankfully, the sixth and latest season manages this balance perfectly, delivering one of the show’s best outings yet.The Slow Horses find themselves wiped from Park databases, then targeted by mysterious assassins. | Apple TVAn adaptation of two of Mick Herron’s novels, Joe Country (2019) and Slough House (2021), Season 6 of Slow Horses finds the agents of Slough House being mysteriously picked off one by one. It starts with poor ex-Slow Horse Struan Loy (Paul Higgins) being discovered burned to a crisp in a storage unit — a death that’s written off as a freak accident by Diana Taverner, who is preoccupied with settling into her long-coveted position as First Desk at MI5. But Jackson Lamb smells something fishy, and when more bodies start dropping, he immediately takes his Slow Horses off-grid. But wrangling his team of misfits is always easier said than done: while he manages to send Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves), Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), and Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) off to collect ex-Slough Housers Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar) and Moira Tregorian (Joanna Scanlan) and head to a safe house, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) naturally goes rogue.Still wearing the suit from his grandfather’s funeral, River returns to his grandfather’s house, only to find the presumed-dead Sid Baker (Olivia Cooke) hiding out there. They’re immediately attacked by the two Russian assassins (Kyle Soller and MyAnna Buring) who have been targeting the Slow Horses as part of a sinister, larger plot that may reach back to Diana Taverner. While they manage to escape thanks to the intervention of resident Slough House weirdo J.K. Coe (Tom Brooke), River comes to suspect that Sid may know more than she lets on. Meanwhile, River’s mercenary father Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving) resurfaces to throw a wrench in the works by targeting Lamb’s key witness Reece Nesmith (Lenny Rush).Sid is back! | Apple TVSlow Horses is at its best when it leans into its underdog premise, and Season 6 delivers on that front by forcing the Slow Horses to go on the run; the catch is, no one cares that they are. Their disappearances from Park databases are met with a shrug by Taverner and her team (except for Ruth Bradley’s always virtuous security chief Emma Flyte), and the rapidly rising body count is basically ignored, making it feel like the Slow Horses are truly on their own. That’s all for the better: Oldman’s Lamb is most satisfying to watch when he’s operating by his self-proclaimed “Moscow rules” — aka, watch your back and do anything to survive. At this point in the show, it’s no surprise to the audience to have Lamb show he’s two steps ahead of everyone else, but it’s refreshing to see him show glimmers of affection for his “Joes” as they face their most real and pressing threat yet. This season, Lamb’s back is to the wall just as much as his Slow Horses are, and that raises the stakes astronomically.Meanwhile, Lowden is in peak form here as TV’s reigning No. 1 failson. Even though the season loses something by largely separating Cartwright and Lamb — the show’s weird joys were in watching the resident hotshot agent get constantly humbled by the ridiculous, but secretly competent, Cold War spy — but it says something that Slow Horses is confident enough in itself that it can start to buck its formula. And despite Cooke’s Sid Baker being absent since the early episodes of Season 1, she and Lowden fall into an easy chemistry that elevates their storyline. Andor’s Kyle Soller and The Witcher’s MyAnna Buring also make for two of the most menacing villains of the show, dispatching the Slow Horses with terrifying ease. Harry Lloyd as Damien Cantor, a media mogul who manages to knock Taverner down a peg, also slips seamlessly into the cast, making the new additions this season some of the strongest supporting players the show has had.Kyle Soller and MyAnna Buring are some of the best (and most effective) villains of the show. | Apple TVSeason 6 feels like the culmination of everything that makes Slow Horses such a singular spy show: its plots are complex and twisty, its stakes are real and grounded, and its characters are competent but still a little goofy. It’s always a joy to see Lamb easily maneuver around threats like Frank Harkness — one riveting scene in which Oldman and Weaving face off at a fast-food place feels like the show’s homage to Heat — before suddenly cutting to a scene where he has a fart-off with Lenny. And yes, River Cartwright runs a lot and gets beaten up even more. Slow Horses knows what we’re watching this show for.Slow Horses Season 6 premieres on Apple TV on September 16.