Commentary: Pacing Allows ‘Slow Horses’ To Be Funny

Tone is an extremely important part of storytelling. It determines whether or not a story is a comedy, a drama, or something in between. Pacing also has a lot to do with tone. In certain action thrillers, the pacing is fast and tense. The story has a lot of condensed beats in order to keep the audience at the edge of their seats. The Bourne franchise is a great example of this as Matt Damon‘s character is constantly on the move. However, if the pacing of the films were slowed down, it would provide a lot more opportunity for this spy thriller to soften its tone and have a lot more comedic elements, which is exactly what Slow Horses does.

The series is about an old and washed up spy named Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) in charge of a bureau of MI5 misfits. In the show’s first season, the group gets thrust into the middle of terrorist plot when a Pakistani student is abducted by a far right militant group. In reality, the kidnapping was part of a false flag operation to frame the militant group for extremist activities, but the operation goes off the rails and it is up to Lamb’s group of spies to set things right.

The plot itself is fairly typical of a spy thriller. One can even imagine this type of plot being the central conflict in a Bourne film. But Slow Horses isn’t a film. It’s a television series organized into six-episode seasons. The plot itself doesn’t have enough twists and turns to keep the spy thriller elements of the story engaged the entire time. Instead, there are a lot of slower down moments involving stakeouts and clandestine meetings. This allows the program the ability to take its time, flesh out its characters and even insert some odd comedy into the equation. Because the plot isn’t constantly on the move, the slow pacing gives it a completely different vibe than the Bourne films even though the aesthetic is much similar. It’s what makes Slow Horses such a unique spy story in a crowded field.

Slow Horses is now streaming on Apple+.