Commentary: ‘Slow Horses’ Doesn’t Shy Away From Difficult Scenes

Graphic content has always been a controversial subject when being depicted in media. A lot of topics are very dark and hard to tackle in a story, but that doesn’t mean films and television shows should shy away from them. Quite often when there’s difficult subject matter being depicted, a story will move that event off camera or allow the viewer to fill in the blanks as to what’s happening. However, some shows avoid shying away and dive right in to the hard-to-watch scenes. This past season of Slow Horses opened just that way.

The program tells the story of Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), an old school spy in charge of a group of problematic MI6 agents who routinely find themselves in the middle of disastrous terror plots. This year’s plot revolved around a group of former Libyan security officers who orchestrated chaos in London using an old MI6 playbook. The first part of the plan was to “attack the village.” In this case, that meant manipulating a lone wolf into becoming an active shooter who indiscriminately murdered people in a very public setting.

There was no preamble to give the viewer an idea of the larger terror attack at work. Instead, the premiere episode began with the shooter preparing for the massacre and then committing it. It was a very cold and brutal scene that took into account the graphic nature of the event. Mass shootings have become unfortunately common these days. They are a very sensitive subject, but the show didn’t portray the violence off-screen or tone it down. It depicted the horrible tragedy as realistically as it could, which makes for a very powerful and uncomfortable moment. It may be hard for some viewers to watch, but Slow Horses made an artistic choice not to hide from it.

Slow Horses is now streaming on AppleTV.