James Delingpole James Delingpole

The best TV spy drama since Smiley’s People: Apple TV+’s Slow Horses reviewed

It’s the kind of drama series that the BBC hasn’t been capable of making since the 1980s

So good you can ignore the irksome politics: Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner and Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb 
issue 14 May 2022

How thriller writers must miss the Cold War! Early John le Carré and Len Deighton had it easy when trying to create a convincingly menacing enemy: the Soviets, obviously. But their successors are forced to go through all manner of desperate contortions to generate their bad guy McGuffin. They can’t do Muslims because that’s Islamophobic; they can’t do the Chinese because the entertainment industry (like everywhere) is too in thrall to the CCP.

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