Slough House Probes the ‘Death’ of a Team Member

Apple TV+’s Slow Horses Season 4 premiere, “Identity Theft,” wasted no time ramping up its stakes. Rather, it slammed us with explosions, murder, and emotionally fraught espionage, all while building to a major new threat that will rattle Slough House’s very foundations.

“Identity Theft” stays true to Slow Horses’ style right from the start. Roddy (Christopher Chung of Waterloo Road) arrives at a Christmas party in a fried chicken joint, only to find his colleagues absent. His calls go unanswered until Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar from Harlots) responds. She reveals that their boss, the heavy-drinking and gas-passing Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), lied to Roddy to get him out of his hair.

As Roddy leaves the restaurant, a car bomb detonates in a nearby shopping center, plunging MI5 into chaos. The scope and suddenness of the attack catch everyone by surprise. Second Desk Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) is left with pressing questions: Was this an isolated incident, or the beginning of a larger criminal conspiracy? Her superior, the new First Desk (Claude Whelan from Battlestar Galactica), is of little help.

The next day, River (Jack Lowden) tells Louisa that his grandfather, legendary spymaster David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce from The Crown), is losing his memory and suffering from extreme paranoia. Louisa urges River to visit him, stressing that it’s his turn to step up and care for the grandfather who always supported him.

River’s concern for his grandfather is justified. David Cartwright is convinced he’s on someone’s kill list and can scarcely return from a grocery run without scrambling for a shotgun. With the firearm in hand, he settles in the most advantageous corner of his living room, only to nod off.

An urgent pounding on the front door awakens him. A voice claiming to be River convinces David to open the door. The man who enters offers to run him a bath, but something feels off. The camera deliberately avoids showing the visitor’s face. Suspicious, David follows him upstairs and, in a moment of confusion, shoots him dead.

Lamb arrives at the Cartwright house shortly after the shooting and meets Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley from Ted Lasso), the new MI5 head of internal affairs. She needs him to confirm if the faceless body in David’s bathtub is indeed River. Lamb inspects the scene and confirms the corpse’s identity. For someone so fiercely protective of his spies, Lamb’s apparent indifference to River’s death seems odd. He leaves the scene, sits alone in his car, and for a moment, convinces us he genuinely believes River is dead.

Meanwhile, Taverner sends a task force to investigate the bombing suspect’s apartment. The suspect, going by the name Robert Winters, is missing, and his living space lacks bombs or booby traps. A simple pull on the blinds sets off an explosion, indicating that Winters had rigged the shades to trigger a blast.

The Slough House crew reels from the news of River’s “death,” which they learn through Roddy’s insensitive swiping of River’s hard drive. Lamb’s absence from the team is telling.

After leaving the Cartwright house, Lamb goes straight to Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves), his former office administrator, who resigned last season. Their exchange is awkward, but Lamb gets to the point: He believes River is alive and suspects Standish has seen both River and David since the murder. Although Standish denies any knowledge, Lamb persuades her to prove River is alive. David, meanwhile, is asleep in Standish’s bedroom.

“Identity Theft” concludes with River tearing through the French countryside in the backseat of a taxi. He holds a fake passport and is determined to uncover who is targeting his family.

Source: TVLine, Apple TV+