Summary
Slow Horses continues to weave a tangled web in Season 5, with “Incommunicado” firming up the connection between Ho and a terrorist group, but leaving the crucial details tantalisingly unexplained for now.
We all know a Roddy Ho, and we all went to kill him, so you can understand why the first order of business in Slow Horses Season 5 has been to determine whether Roddy’s attempted assassination is part of some wider scheme to destabilise a sovereign nation or someone simply doing the world a favour. Episode 2, “Incommunicado”, leaves no room for debate, drawing explicit connections between Roddy and the Abbotsfield massacre that kicked off the premiere. He had a pretty girlfriend, after all. It should have been obvious she was up to something.
The opening of this episode is very funny and ridiculous in the precise, brilliant way this show often is, with Ho finding Jackson Lamb in his apartment, and Lamb later finding a would-be assassin creeping around the place (interesting to note, it’s the sniper who shot Rob Trew). Some bleach in the eyes and a novelty sword to the back, and the assailant has been sent crashing through the window and thudding down to the balcony below, prompting his masked associates to open fire with more military-grade weaponry on Lamb, Ho, and Shirley, who was standing vigil outside. Shirley isn’t quite able to apprehend the assailant, but she has a good go at it.
The proof that Ho was a target after all doesn’t bring the Slough House crew any closer to understanding how he’s connected to Abbotsfield. Information about this is drip-fed to the audience through Diana Taverner and Peter Judd, of all people, who has traded a political career to work as a middleman for a security company that just so happens to have had a consignment of weapons and explosives stolen from a Docklands arms fair a month earlier. The theft was never reported, and the list of missing items is long, which doesn’t bode well for Britain’s national security. But it’s a lead for MI5, and an excuse to get Judd, who is leveraging his former contacts in government to secure cosy contracts for arms dealers, back involved in the show.
While this is going on, the Slough House team is forced to work their own angles, the most suspicious of which is that a human female was romantically interested in Roddy Ho. Ho, of course, believes she’s totally innocent, since why wouldn’t a pretty girl be charmed by the Rodster? Everyone else, though, is notably less convinced. The fact that the would-be assassin had a key to Ho’s apartment is a bit of a giveaway in itself.
River and JK Coe are dispatched to what Ho believes is his girlfriend Tara’s home address, where they find a totally innocent Polish couple with no idea what either of them is talking about. River and JK form an unlikely comedic double-act in Slow Horses Season 5, Episode 2, which will become important later in this season, providing it hews close to the source material. It’s already veering away from it in some rather important ways – and some not-to-important ones; Tara is called Kim in the book – but it seems unlikely that it’ll skip over one of the key hinge points, which River and JK are intimately connected to.
On the subject of unclear connections, we now have cause to wonder what went on at a conference in Copenhagen attended by MI5’s First Desk, Claude Whelan. Whelan, as useful as a chocolate fireguard at the best of times, is approached during a run in Hyde Park by an investigative journalist named Carl, who has been retained by Dodie Gimball, Dennis Gimball’s tabloid columnist wife, whom Whelan insulted in the premiere. Is a potential affair the only thing he has to worry about, or does Whelan know more about what’s going on that he’d be comfortable sharing? Either way, it’s pretty clear why it’s really Lady Di who runs the place.
Speaking of Lady Di, having established a connection between Ho and Abbotsfield, she marches into Slough House to spirit him away for interrogation at the Park, leaving the rest of the gang on lockdown in the building. It’s a turn of events that Lamb was obviously anticipating, though it doesn’t provide any more clarity on what Ho’s connection is to a terrorist outfit that seems determined to destabilise Britain by enlisting unwitting stooges in their schemes. Rob Trew was one, weaponised as a mass shooter. Tara might be another. And by the end of “Incommunicado”, they have enlisted a few more dopey eco-warriors to sabotage a petroleum refinery, as well as killing and disposing of their ally who was wounded during the attack on Ho. It’s evidently a ruthless group, but thus far, their motives remain slightly unclear. The idea that the real answers might be provided by Roddy Ho is good for a laugh, if nothing else.
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