5 Best Shows To Watch After Apple TV’s Slow Horses

Apple TV has now become a streaming service known for consistently churning out bangers. With the underrated modern sci-fi classic series “For All Mankind” and the award-munching comedic creep-fest “Widow’s Bay” to name a few, there’s one series that still feels, even after its sixth season, like it’s slipping under the radar, just like the band of bad spies it focuses on. “Slow Horses” feels like it’s going to become “The Wire” of spy shows, in that it probably won’t get the full attention it deserves until it ends. Adapting Mick Herron’s “Slough House” books, the series follows Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), a couch potato and product of the Cold War, as he tries to manage a gang of failed MI6 agents who constantly find themselves in danger.

After finishing its sixth season, the show continues to earn immense praise from critics, with not a single episode dropping below 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. But now, after waiting another year to get reacquainted with the residents of Slough House, what can keep us busy? Unlike The Park, which sends River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and his associates on pointless tasks to keep them occupied, we’ve found five shows that can thankfully fill the void while we wait to get back in action. If you like a bit more wit in your thrillers than usual, or some barbarous British back-and-forth, we’ve got you covered. So do as Lamb would do: open up your stinkiest bag of crisps, put your feet up, and get stuck into these for the time being.

Down Cemetery Road

Another piece of work adapted from Mike Herron, “Down Cemetery Road,” hasn’t yet garnered anywhere near the attention or the seasons of “Slow Horses,” but it spins a small-time crime caper with sprinkles of government conspiracies. Oscar-winning legend Emma Thompson plays private investigator Zoë Boehm, who takes on a case involving a house explosion and a missing child. Caught in the middle is “Luther” star Ruth Wilson as Sarah Tucker, who believes there’s more to this accident than the police are letting on. Along the way, there are sibling assassins, staged suicides, and Thompson relishing just about every scene she’s in.

If you need a stand-in for Jackson Lamb while he’s taking lunch in the back of some dingy restaurant somewhere, then Boehm is an ideal substitute. Cut from a very similar cloth, Boehm bears the same brains and limited tolerance for others as the head of Slough House. As a result, this gripping thriller is laced with dark humor and some exceptional twists and turns that we need to see more of. A second season was greenlit with an all-new cast, reuniting Boehm and Trafford (formerly Tucker) in a Holmes-and-Watson-like partnership. Give it a watch and get on the ground floor, or the bottom of the road, before this show starts to reach the same levels as the spy show people are only just starting to catch on to.

Black Doves

Before it swoops in with its second season this week, you might want to hammer through what feels like Netflix’s answer to “Slow Horses”: the Keira Knightley-led show “Black Doves.” Created by Joe Barton (showrunner of the overlooked sci-fi series, “The Lazarus Project”), the show follows Knightley’s Helen Webb, a spy who works for an off-the-books agency more concerned with protecting secrets than with the country it operates in. For Helen, that’s a job that becomes even tougher when her cover as the wife of the Secretary of State for Defense is at risk of being blown when it’s discovered she’s been having an affair, and her man on the side is found dead.

It’s hard not to compare this series to the one over at Slough House. Webb might have a bit more depth than the spies caught slacking on Apple TV’s show, but Barton’s writing has just as much bite, especially with some of the cast involved. Joining our shady hero in her damage-control effort is her former mentor and friend, Sam Young, played by the enigmatic Ben Whishaw, while the BAFTA-winning Sarah Lancashire is monitoring and manipulating both of them as their boss, Reed, who feels like an amalgamation of both Oldman’s Lamb and Kristin Scott Thomas’ Diana Taverner. One thing “Black Doves” might beat the competition on, however, is just how cold-blooded and heavy-handed it can be, with a brutal encounter in a shop being a standout sequence in season 1. We only hope its follow-up matches that standard.

The Night Manager

There’s no question that Tom Hiddleston’s career highlight might’ve been his portrayal of Loki, which caused issues for Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the rest of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but his stint as “The Night Manager” still feels like an immensely overlooked performance that only recently returned to the spotlight. Perhaps more suave than Slow Horses, “The Night Manager” is adapted from the John le Carré book of the same name and initially aired in 2016 before returning with a second season a decade later. Hiddleston plays former British soldier Jonathan Pine, whose hopes for a quiet life as a hotel night manager are shattered when he crosses paths with an elusive war criminal and arms dealer, Richard “Dickie” Onslow Roper (Hugh Laurie). At the request of Foreign Office task force boss Angela Burr (the consistently brilliant Olivia Colman), Pine is assigned to infiltrate Roper’s entourage and capture him by any means necessary.

Effortlessly suave and brilliantly sharp, Hiddleston’s Pine has the characteristics of a spy before he’s even given the chance to be one. His drive and focus on the mission Burr gives him only become more gripping when he’s forced to go up against Laurie’s Roper, who, along with his bad-guy shift in “Tomorrowland,” is another villain that’s addictive to watch. Season 2 might struggle to match the energy of its predecessor from a decade earlier, but “The Night Manager” remains a show worth checking in for.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Sometimes great spies come in twos, and this list has a pair. First, there’s the immensely underrated “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” co-created by Francesca Stone and the show’s Mr. Smith, Donald Glover. Joining him in on the action is Maya Erskine (star of the near-perfect “Blue Eye Samurai”) as his colleague who is thrown together as a pair to pose as the titular married couple. From there, the two are sent on a variety of dangerous missions before their handlers manipulate the two to begin turning on each other, leading to broken hearts and empty bullet casings strewn all over the place.

Infectiously cool and brilliantly written, “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” works as both a great spy series and a lethal rom-com. Glover and Erskine bounce off each other in the dangerous scenarios they find themselves in, often alongside brilliant surprise cameos that either help or hinder their relationship and their mission. We’d advise keeping comms open for the time being, too, given that a second season has been greenlit that’s set to focus on Another John and Another Jane Smith (Matt Rogers and Francesca Scorsese), with the original Mr. and Mrs. Smith set to return. Here’s hoping they made it beyond the honeymoon period in one piece.

The Americans

All of these shows will keep you busy before Jackson and his Joes return to Apple TV, but if one entry stands out more than the rest, it’s the brilliantly cold-blooded couple known as “The Americans.” Set in 1981, the show follows two deep-cover KGB agents (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) trying to balance suburban family life with dangerous missions and manipulating high-value targets, all for the good of the homeland. Spanning six award-winning seasons, the show is a brilliant display of its leading couple, who actually ended up together in real life, which helps explain the flawless, friction-laced chemistry.

As is the standard practice for spy couples, Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings are part of a partnership built on lies that thrives on them all the same. They commit heinous acts to complete solo or joint missions, and the complex work they bring home creates constant tension in a relationship that often pushes love to the bottom of its to-do list. Both Rhys and Russell are remarkable in their respective roles, each with a fascinating number of layers in this tense, raunchy and often pulse-pounding world. Lying runs at every level; it’s one of the most complex shows ever to grace the screen, kicking things off with what might be one of the best pilot episodes ever made.