An iceberg and lack of foresight contributed to the sinking of the Titanic, which has just turned 110 years old.
Also the officer who mistakenly took the keys to the binoculars cabinet preventing the lookouts from detecting what was coming in time, the kind of mistake that puts you on the b-side of the story.
An undesirable corner where we would find the protagonists of
Slow horses
, the series based on the Mick Herron saga that Apple TV + has just released.
The
slow horses
of the title are a group of disastrous spies, exiled in the House of the Bog, the purgatory to which disgraced British agents are relegated.
They are led by Jackson Lamb, an aerophagic bastard, as slovenly as he is brilliant, played by Gary Oldman in what seems like Borja's eczehomo version of his George Smiley in
El Topo
.
Let no one look here for cut suits on Savile Row, shaken
martinis
, or stylized fight scenes.
The spies in
Slow Horses
are closer to the bizarre office of
Killing Eve
and the depressing interiors of the so-called
Rubicon
, than to the glamor inherent in espionage fiction.
What we do find is humor, very black, and talent.
Joining Oldman, —whom we haven't seen on television since his spitting duel with Joey Tribbiani— Kristin Scott Thomas, the wonderful Saskia Reeves and, glancingly, Jonathan Pryce, who returns to British intelligence three decades after the hilarious
Jumpin' Jack Flash
and to the sound of the same music: Mick Jagger is in charge of the main theme of the series.
In the eighties, Pryce was fleeing from the KGB, now the enemy is a group of extreme right-wing mules that, like the iceberg, advance inexorably.
Let no one lose sight of the binoculars.
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