We’ve finally got around to watching Slow Horses, the Apple TV drama that everyone’s been talking about.
Set against the backdrop of the iconic London skyline, the series has just finished its third season. We’re only two episodes into that, so please don’t tell me what happens.
It’s British drama at its best. This spy thriller centres on a dysfunctional team of MI5 agents who have been thrown together because each of them has mucked up one way or another.
Heading this bunch of misfits is Gary Oldman, whose portrayal of the seedy Jackson Lamb, with greasy hair, fag hanging out of his mouth and a terrible wind problem, is masterful, especially when set against the ice queen coolness and poise of Kristin Scott Thomas as his nemesis in an A-line skirt.
The script is excellent, the characters believable and the cast superb. The series carries just the right weight of tension, comedy, gore and mystery. We’ll be very sad when we reach the end.
I’m currently listening to Bad Women: The Ripper Retold, a BBC podcast by author and historian Halle Rubenhold about the untold story of the victims in the Whitechapel murders of 1888.
I’ve always been interested in the story – who isn’t? – and remember looking through the 1888 file of my own local newspaper at the columns and columns devoted to the grisly details of these terrible crimes.
The story is known all over the world and various theories have sprung up over the years. We think we know all about it, but Rubenhold looks at it from a completely different perspective. It’s shocking, really, that this hasn’t been done before.
A few years ago I read her book, The Five, on which this podcast is based, and it was a real eye-opener. A terrific amount of research went into this work of non-fiction.
‘Ripperologists’ will tell you otherwise, but it doesn’t matter that we don’t know the identity of the murderer or probably never will. The thing that has been overlooked in this story, time and time again, are the women he killed.
In Rubenhold’s hands, they become real people, who lived and loved, with early aspirations and hopes. They married, had children. And then they fell on hard times and met a dreadful end.
Maddie Grigg 