Watched the first episode of Slow Horses three separate times and it finally clicked on a flight to Dallas

Thea Torres · 2026-10-12T06:40:04.865819+00:00

For about a year people kept telling me Slow Horses was the best show on TV and I just did not get it. I tried the pilot twice at home and turned it off both times, once after 20 minutes and once around the 35 minute mark. Then last week I was on a flight to Dallas with no wifi and nothing downloaded except that first episode, so I had no choice. Somewhere over Arkansas it clicked and I watched four more episodes in the hotel that night on my laptop. The thing I got wrong is that I kept waiting for it to feel like a spy thriller, big set pieces and twists every ten minutes, and it is actually a workplace comedy that happens to involve spies. Once I stopped expecting Bond and started watching it like The Office with worse coffee, the whole thing opened up. I finished all four seasons in nine days, which is fast for me because I usually quit shows around episode three. So my pushback on the popular take is this, people say it is a slow burn and you have to be patient, but I think it is the opposite, you have to stop waiting for it to turn into something else. Has a show ever clicked for you only after you gave up on what you thought it was supposed to be?

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Watched the first episode of Slow Horses three separate times and it finally clicked on a flight to Dallas | Binge Worthy Shows - Thought Shares