Slow Horses 2.6: The Heralds of Humiliation

An outstanding finale to the short six-episode season two of Slow Horses on Apple TV+ tonight.

Here are some of my many favorite parts [of course, spoilers ahead ... ]:

• The double funeral for Min was sad, hilarious, perfect in every way.  I even learned something: this season of Slow Horses is taking place in 2016.  Was that known before?  Possibly, I may have dozed off for a second in a previous episode.
• River's grandfather getting the best of his would-be assassin.  As he told River when he was chided by River for opening the front door.
• Roddy (I decided to just stay with first names in this review) getting some real action (that is, combat of sorts) in the field.
• Louisa at both Min funerals. and also what Louisa did to that Russian killer.  (I lost count of how many of the Russian killers were bald.  Three?)
• Lamb explaining that his team can't be humiliated, because they've already been all humiliated.
• I know I've said this many times already, but it's worth repeating:  Mick Jagger's "Strange Games" sounds better than ever, every time I hear it.  The song and its performance are worthy successors to Johnny Rivers' (no relation) "Secret Agent Man".

And here's one thing I didn't like:

• Spider survived.   Ok, I know the character plays an important role, but I just don't like him.

There'll be a Season 3, and I'll be back here with reviews.  In the meantime, Happy New Year!

See also Slow Horses 2.1-2.2: Do Horses Eat Ramen? ... 2.3: Faster Than You Think ... 2.4-2.5: Lamb Firing On All Cylinders

And see also Slow Horses 1.1-2: Fast-Moving Spy Thriller ... Slow Horses 1.3: The Fine Art of Bumbling ... Slow Horses 1.4: Fine New Song by Mick Jagger ... Slow Horses 1.5: Did You Hear the One About the ... Slow Horses 1.6: The Scorecard

  

Slow Horses 1.4: Fine New Song by Mick Jagger

Well, I was glad to see that Slow Horses continued its streak of flatulence by Lamb in episode 1.4, up yesterday on Apple TV+, with Lamb advising that some lamb dish he ate earlier would be making a "reappearance".  Ok, this was not flatulence per se, it was just an allusion to it, but it gets a boost as a mention with someone named Lamb talking about lamb.

But one thing I didn't like in this episode was the continued near absence of Sid.  As I said in an earlier review, she is one of my favorite characters, and I'd like to see her getting more action than just in a coma.

Otherwise, there wasn't all that much that was actually new in this episode.  It's clear now that the true villains are MI5, and I'm glad to see our slow horses in one way or another continuing to get the better of them.  It was good to see Catherine Standish in so many scenes with Lamb -- I think they're a good couple.  She no doubt has an interesting backstory, and it would fun to see more of that.

So that's all I have to say about episode 1.4.  But this might be a good time to say how much I like Mick Jagger's theme song, "Strange Game," written very recently for the series (see here for how this came to be).  Starts off with a great rhyme -- "losers" and "boozers" -- and goes on with a lyric that shows Jagger hasn't lost his chops with words.  He also wrote the music, which is good, too.  The whole song reminds me a little of The Doors' "People Are Strange" and Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man" but, hey, harkening back to the 1960s is fine with me.  In fact, I think the whole idea of asking a rock legend to write and sing a new song for a series is brilliant, and beats choosing a well-known song that everyone already knows as a theme song, which is the way most new series go these days.

Jagger writing and singing "Strange Game" is just one example of the originality of Slow Horses, which I'm glad is here.  See you next week with my next review.

See also Slow Horses 1.1-2: Fast-Moving Spy Thriller ... Slow Horses 1.3: The Fine Art of Bumbling

  

The Lady in the Woods: The Snake, with a Twist and Political Upshot

Continuing my reviews of the six semi-finalists in the New York New Works (NYNW) Theatre Festival which I saw on Friday night at The Duke on 42nd Street - short plays, all of which were excellent - we have Hyten Davidson's The Lady in the Woods, which takes place in "a cabin the forest, upstate New York, the present, late November".  In other words, in both place and time, pretty close to home.  In more ways than one.

For although The Lady in the Woods may sound like an allegory, and it actually is, it has cutting-edge relevance to what we see and hear on the news every day.  The Lady welcomes a man from the forest with frostbite on his feet and frost in his hair into her home, where she's alone, and offers him food.  Much like the "tender-hearted woman" in Al Wilson's 1968 hit record, "The Snake" (which also has frost on its skin) (written by Oscar Brown and co-produced by the great Johnny Rivers), in turn based on "The Farmer and the Viper," an Aesop's fable.

Here's the song in case you don't remember or never heard of it:



So in the song and the fable, the woman (farmer in the fable) are rewarded for their kindness by  death from the snake (viper) which proceeds to more than the bite the hands that fed them.  Now if that moral sounds queasily familiar, it may be because none other than Donald Trump read lyrics from "The Snake" at campaign rallies in 2016 and after he became President in 2017, to illustrate his argument about what would happen if we good Americans let Syrian refugees into our country (I wish I were kidding).

But this makes the ending of The Lady in the Woods even more notable.  I won't give that ending explicitly away, but suffice to say that our Lady does not end up the same as the tender-hearted woman in Al Wilson's song, or Trump's painting of Americans in her image.

Very well acted by Laura Frenzer as the Lady, and Jack Coggins as the man from the forest.  See it if you can.

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

See also my reviews of the other NYNW semi-finalists:  Max & Domino ...  Frozen West ... Dear Diary, Burning Leaves, Sammy and Esther Are Breaking Up