TV Thrills: Andor & Slow Horses

Welp, the Covid finally came for me so I had plenty of time to lay prostrate on my couch last week and catch up on all the TV I missed in 2022. If you've also missed these shows, I'm afraid to say you really do need to add them to your list, because they are excellent.

Andor: As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I'm not a Star Wars person, yet I have seen all the movies because my best friend is a fan and always takes me to see them. Well this time around, my best friend, my boyfriend, and finally, my boss, all jumped on the Andor bandwagon and kept telling me how good it was. And now, with no excuse to not watch, I found myself bingeing twelve episodes in three days and going huh, that was pretty great.

The show serves as a prequel to Rogue One. Let me assure you, I had no memory of that movie and didn't need to in order to follow this story. This show tells the tale of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) who is a bit of a wastrel and a rogue, taking on odd jobs and finding quick ways to make a buck. All he wants is to make a pile of cash so that he and his elderly mother can go live a life of luxury rather than living their current hardscrabble existence on one of the poorer industrial outposts of the Empire. But of course, when one of his jobs goes pear-shaped, Andor gets roped into a hell of a lot more than he bargained for. And eventually, our seemingly aimless rogue realizes that he may have a moral center after all and might be ready to join the Rebel Alliance. 

Created by Tony Gilroy, this is a splendidly cinematic show. There are a lot of characters and political machinations about the formation of the Rebel Alliance (this is who Luke, Leia, and Han will ultimately fight for, the Resistance against the evil Empire in the original Star Wars trilogy), but I paid no heed to any of that. Instead, I was simply captivated by all the wonderful action set pieces set across different worlds in this universe. There is an episode that features an insane heist sequence that will blow your mind. And as though this wasn't enough for the first season, they proceed to top that with an epic prison break sequence a few episodes later that is just as elaborate and ingenious. The show is firing on all cylinders in terms of spectacle and storytelling and whether you're a Star Wars fanatic or a complete newbie, you should find something to love. It's a damn good yarn.

Slow Horses: This show feels like The Thick of It but with spies. Based on a series of novels by Mick Herron, this is the story of Slough House, a division of MI5 that is where incompetent spies are sent when they are deemed too much of a liability on regular operations but don't need to be fired outright. They are meant to be glorified paper-pushers. But of course, composed of a bunch of people who did start out as intelligent and ambitious, they end up inadvertently taking on high-profile cases and having to see them through, albeit, rather disastrously.

The head of this unit is Jackson Lamb, who is played by Gary Oldman in quite the casting coup. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Oldman famously played George Smiley, one of John LeCarre's most celebrated fictional spies, so it's hilarious to now see him as Lamb, a rude, downtrodden, slovenly man who seems to hate everyone in his department. He is a nightmare of a boss, but as the series progresses, you'll start to see that this is actually a man who cares a great deal about his fellow spies and doing the job well. Now, he is often dealing with incompetent people who can't do a good job, but a man can't have everything right?

This is also a show with fantastic action set pieces (the opening sequence in the pilot episode instantly hooked me, and suddenly I had watched all two seasons available - only six episodes each, so this is not a rigorous time commitment!) It's very British, very unsophisticated James Bond, and can also be very gory and shocking at times. There are some nasty deaths in that first season, and if you're squeamish, this may not be the show for you. But if you enjoy some tradecraft and bumbling spy narratives, this might be exactly what you need to settle down with this weekend.