‘Slow Horses’ Boss Explains Season 6 Premiere Deaths

Slow Horses continues to prove itself as one of the best shows on television, and that remains true as Season 6 gets underway. And the premiere, which dropped on Apple TV on September 16, gets off to a shocking start, with two deaths that will reverberate throughout the season. Warning: Spoilers for the Slow Horses Season 6 premiere ahead!

For seasons now, fans have watched River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) grappling with his grandfather David’s (Jonathan Pryce) slow decline due to dementia, and as the premiere reveals, he died. Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) brings him to The Park to discuss funeral plans, since they can’t rule out that someone causes trouble, even if half the people who will be there think he works for the Department of Transport. River shapes his eulogy to pay proper tribute to the work his grandfather did as a spy while also maintaining that cover.

For River, his grandfather’s death leaves him “reeling,” co-executive producer Gaby Chiappe, who adapted the season for television, tells TV Insider. “He’s been losing his grandfather slowly, hasn’t he, over the past couple of seasons, to dementia? And with his grandfather gone — his mother’s never really been part of his life very much, she left him with his grandparents — he’s unanchored and he is vulnerable. He probably wouldn’t think of himself in that way, but I think we can see it, that he’s someone who’s trying to keep on keeping on, and he’s alone. He’s so alone.”

Because of that, “Sid [Olivia Cooke] coming back and Frank Harkness being around, they’re characters who he can sort of — he needs to find himself in relation to other people,” she continues. “Who is he now that his grandfather’s dead? And his grandfather is such an ambiguous character morally. We know Jackson Lamb hates his grandfather. And so River’s left with nothing really at the beginning of this, nothing anchoring him to anyone else. And even the Slow Horses family, I think, he’s sort of apart from that at the very beginning.”

The rest of Slough House attends the funeral — but they’re not the only ones. River’s father, mercenary Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving), does as well. River confronts him, pushing for answers as to why he’s there, and Frank only tells him “business” … before hitting his son in the throat, remarking that his mother isn’t there, and driving off, as River tries to hang onto the front (he does fall off). It’s the exact kind of humor that Slow Horses (and Mick Herron‘s writing) is known for and does so well.

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“I think the amazing thing about the tone of Slow Horses, and this is true of the books and everything that Will Smith wrote, is that you get the truly tragic and the truly ridiculous just coexist in the same moment,” says Chiappe. “It’s not even that you flip between them. It’s all happening at once, which I think is one of the reasons it’s so satisfying. It’s ludicrous, and then suddenly you get tears in your eyes and you’re laughing.”

The season opens up with the shocking murder of a former member of Slough House, Struan Loy (Paul Higgins) from Season 1 (he betrayed the team). A man and a woman pose as parties interested in his residential shipping containers venture, only to lock him inside and burn him alive. It’s right out of the book, though it takes place at a different point in Slough House; the sixth season is based on Joe Country as well.

Apple TV

“It’s very arresting, and it felt like it’s the first tremor on the spiderweb that Jackson Lamb feels. This happens; it might be nothing, but it’s Jackson Lamb, so he’s never going to think it’s nothing. And it felt like a really exciting way to — because it feels like a million miles from anything, but you know that Struan Loy used to work at Slough House, and as the episode and then the season progresses, those tremors on the spider’s web get stronger and stronger until it’s revealed what’s actually happening,” Chiappe explains.

“But I think it was fun to start with something that you thought, ‘Where are we? Who’s this? Oh, I remember him.’ But it gives you a lovely distance to travel between that thing that you see, this man living his really, really sad life, living in a shipping container and teaching karate to tiny children while talking about his time in the security forces to them, which clearly is going completely over their heads,” she adds. “And that suddenly, a violence kind of comes into it and a very shocking death, and suddenly we’re back in the dangerous world of Slow Horses, the thriller-y Slow Horses.”

What did you think of the Season 6 premiere and those deaths? Let us know in the comments section below.

Slow Horses, Season 6, Wednesdays, Apple TV