Recap: ‘Slow Horses’ Season 4, Episode 3 Is Top-Tier Television

There’s a grace and efficiency with which Slow Horses moves through its plot that is genuinely admirable. There are a lot of moving parts here in Season 4; a big ensemble solving multiple interconnected mysteries across two countries. Yet Episode 3, “Penny for Your Thoughts”, flows from scene to scene with a just-right pace and sense of escalating tension. It really is masterful, top-tier TV.

There’s a lot of keep track of here, so let’s get on with it.

The French Connection

At the end of Episode 2, River made a nice new French friend who saved his life and then knocked him unconscious with the butt of a shotgun. In “Penny for Your Thoughts” he wakes up thoroughly confused and still in the custody of his new pal, who tells him — at gunpoint, it’s worth mentioning — that someone is coming to speak to him.

That someone turns out to be the mother of Bertrand, the French assassin David Cartwright shot in his bathroom. She’s curious to know why someone who looks very much like her son has arrived in France using his passport, and isn’t especially surprised when River informs her he was shot in the process of trying to drown an old man. They’d be happy for River to leave, except thanks to the photo he found in the chateau in the previous episode he knows that Bertrand has a connection to Robert Winters, the man in Les Arbres who tried to kill him, and several as-yet unidentified perpetrators who would very much like to blow up a few more shopping centers, and River would be interested to learn what that connection is.

Natasha, Bertrand’s mother, explains that he was conceived when she was 17. His father is Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving, in case you haven’t noticed), the man River met at Les Arbres. He raised Bertrand in the chateau and never let Natasha see him. Robert Winters, whose real name was Yves, was also raised there in what seems to have been an atmosphere of extreme discomfort and anger. Frank’s M.O. was to have children by many different women from all over the world, and then force them to leave so he could raise their kids in his image.

That image hasn’t made Bertrand especially popular in Lavande, since he was obviously a thug, so while this conversation is taking place an angry mob is forming outside, believing River to be Bertrand. Victor — Natasha’s cousin, the man who saved River from Les Arbres — tries to talk some sense into them, but they knock him out with a cosh and storm the place, forcing River to flee upstairs, through a window, across a rooftop, through a corrugated roof into a pile of tires, down an alley, and away on a moped that looks like it might have been around since the Revolution.

Desperately Seeking David

Meanwhile, David Cartwright remains the responsibility of Catherine Standish, and that babysitting assignment gets suddenly more complicated when David seems to remember something quite important. He demands to be put in touch with First Desk immediately to warn the Park about “what’s coming”, which seemingly connects River, the Westacres bombing that happened in Episode 1, and whatever exciting plans Robert Winters’ terrorist mates still have to come.

Just as Catherine is beginning to struggle with David, Lamb offers to give him up to Emma Flyte, who turns up at Slough House having discovered from Bertrand’s blood results that he is not, in fact, River Cartwright, and Lamb had been having her on. She’s furious enough to cuff Lamb and take him to the Park for obstructing an investigation, but he offers to burn David instead to spare himself the bother.

Of course, Lamb had already sent Louisa ahead to Standish’s place to relocate David, but she gets there moments after Flyte. Her attempts to run interference fail, but luckily Standish has already moved David. Flyte, who seems perpetually annoyed at the best of times, is fuming with Lamb again.

It’s not all good, though. Standish might have had the foresight to move David into an apartment whose owner she’s catsitting for, but she didn’t anticipate him heading out of the back door and fleeing. We don’t see him again in Slow Horses Season 4, Episode 3, but he’s sure to turn up sooner rather than later.

Ruth Bradley and Gary Oldman in Slow Horses | Image via Apple TV+

First Pest

Now that Whelan knows Robert Winters was an agency “cold body”, he’s determined not to let sleeping dogs lie and goes behind Diana’s back to enlist the services of Giti. If she was switched on enough to find the first identity she could potentially find any more that are hiding in the archives, so Whelan instructs the agency’s archivist, Molly, who visibly detests him, to allow her to poke around in the records.

Everyone’s general distaste for Whelan remains very funny. When he asks Molly who she thinks comes first out of First and Second Desk, she replies, simply, “Diana Taverner”. It’s a very open secret who really runs MI5.

More Office Politics (And Attempted Murder)

In Slough House, Marcus is still intent on selling a gun on the black market to pay off his gambling debts, which Shirley still thinks is a terrible idea (and I concur!). But Shirley is distracted by the news that Roddy is handcuffed to his weight machine (courtesy of Flyte, in response to him trying to chat her up on her way out of the building.) Shirley’s happy to leave him there overnight, so she tries to stop JK from unlocking him, at which point JK rather irrationally holds a knife to her throat.

According to JK, having been bound against his will for an extended period of time himself, he finds Roddy’s predicament rather triggering. Which is fair enough, I suppose.

Moira, meanwhile, is still trying to get herself reassigned, so she returns to Lamb with her end of the bargain made in Episode 2 — David Cartwright never went to France, but his bagman, Bad Sam Chapman, visited Lavande in the 90s. It’s good enough for Lamb, who doesn’t want Moria at Slough House anyway, coming into his office and theatrically sniffing her nosegay (a little device used during the plague to ward off the stench of death.)

Lamb immediately calls Chapman and arranges a meet, but Chapman picks up a tail — the other French assassin who was instructed by Frank to move on the second target, who it turns out isn’t Lamb, but Chapman. Lamb puts the Slow Horses — including Marcus, fresh off selling his Beretta for £3K rather than the £5K it was worth — to work keeping an eye on Chapman, but his tail spots them immediately and pushes Marcus through a shop window to create a distraction.

Pretty soon the assassin catches up with Chapman, and the combined might of Bad Sam, Shirley, and Marcus is scarcely enough to even phase the Frenchman. Luckily, Lamb arrives in the nick of time, driving a black cab through the building and running the assassin over. When he goes to “clean up the roadkill”, though, he has already fled the scene, leaving Slow Horses Season 4, Episode 3 on a slightly ominous note.