Slow Horses has 23 Emmy nominations but just 3 wins – what keeps beating one of TV's most acclaimed dramas and why?

Apple TV had an incredible night at this year's Emmy Awards.

For the first time, the streamer finished as the most successful platform of the year, picking up 28 awards in total – comfortably ahead of its rivals. Widow's Bay led the charge with a record-breaking 14 wins, including outstanding comedy series, while Matthew Rhys made history by winning two lead acting awards on the same night, for Widow's Bay and Netflix thriller The Beast in Me.

Pluribus, meanwhile, collected six awards, including a long-overdue first Emmy for Rhea Seehorn (infamously snubbed for her acclaimed work on Better Call Saul).

But amid all that Apple dominance, one of the streamer's most reliably brilliant series was mostly absent from the winners' list.

Slow Horses went into the 2026 Emmys nominated for nine awards. It came away with just one: Saul Metzstein's richly deserved outstanding directing for a drama series win for season 5 finale Scars.

That result is reflective of the show's Emmy performance more broadly. Across its first five seasons, Slow Horses has now received an impressive 23 nominations, but won just three times.

All three have been in writing or directing categories – Will Smith won for writing season 3's Negotiating with Tigers in 2024, Adam Randall won for directing season 4 finale Hello Goodbye last year, and Metzstein completed the trio this year.

That rightly acknowledges the enormous amount of craft that goes into a series as polished, impressive and – perhaps most remarkably – consistent as Slow Horses.

But no acting awards? That's wild when you consider how instantly iconic Sir Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb has become.

Oldman has now been nominated as outstanding lead actor three years running, without a win. Jack Lowden's less showy but every bit as good performance as River Cartwright has twice been nominated in the supporting category – and is so impressive that Lowden has entered the seemingly never-ending next James Bond conversation, with Oldman himself publicly backing him for the role. Sir Jonathan Pryce has twice been recognised for his quietly devastating work as David Cartwright, but he too remains Emmy-less for the series.

It's not as though Slow Horses is some cult curiosity whose devotees have mistaken affection for objective quality, either.

Radio Times has been beating the drum for the show for years – our season 4 review awarded it four stars and hailed the show’s "remarkable consistency", describing it as a contender for the jewel in Apple TV's crown. Then season 5 earned the full five stars, with our review declaring it the best run yet.

The wider critical consensus tells much the same story. Look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores across the show's five seasons: 95 per cent, 100 per cent, 98 per cent, 100 per cent, 96 per cent.

That consistency is all the more remarkable given the speed at which Slow Horses is produced. Since arriving in 2022, we've had a minimum of one new six-part season every year – indeed, seasons 1 and 2 both arrived in its first year.

That's a minor miracle in an age when more and more series seem to suffer from lengthy breaks between seasons. Slow Horses simply turns up every year, delivers another tightly-plotted, beautifully-acted six hours of television, then gets back to work on the next one.

So what keeps beating it? There is, at least, a pattern.

When Slow Horses finally broke through with its first nine Emmy nominations in 2024 – having remarkably been overlooked entirely prior – it had the misfortune to arrive in the year of Shōgun. The FX epic didn't merely win outstanding drama series – it set a record with 18 Emmys. It beat Slow Horses for drama series, directing and casting, while Hiroyuki Sanada beat Oldman for lead actor and Néstor Carbonell beat Pryce in the guest category. Lowden, meanwhile, lost to The Morning Show's Billy Crudup. Slow Horses salvaged that writing win for Smith.

A year later, Shōgun was replaced by another shiny new Emmy favourite.

Season 4 of Slow Horses earned five nominations, but The Pitt won outstanding drama series in its very first season. Noah Wyle's comeback as Dr Robby also saw him beat Oldman to lead actor, while The Pitt took the casting award. Smith lost the writing prize to Andor's Dan Gilroy, although Randall finally secured Slow Horses its directing Emmy.

This year? More of the same.

The Pitt retained outstanding drama series and Wyle retained lead actor, denying both Slow Horses and Oldman for the second year running. Lowden lost supporting actor to Task's Tom Pelphrey, Pryce lost Guest Actor to The Pitt's Ernest Harden Jr, and Smith's Scars script lost to Vince Gilligan's Pluribus. The Pitt also beat Slow Horses in casting, while Pluribus took production design.

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None of those winners is undeserving. But taken together, the results suggest that Slow Horses may be suffering precisely because of one of its greatest strengths.

Awards voters love momentum. They love the exciting new show, the phenomenon, the comeback story, the series that feels like the programme everyone is talking about right now. In 2024 that was Shōgun. In 2025 it was The Pitt. This year, The Pitt remained enormously powerful while Pluribus and Task provided enticing new alternatives.

Slow Horses, by contrast, has become dependable. Its extraordinary consistency means another excellent season no longer feels surprising. There is no reinvention or comeback narrative to sell. It doesn't disappear for three years and return as an "event". It just comes back every autumn and is extremely good again.

Reliability is Slow Horses' superpower – but perhaps it's also its awards-season weakness.

Which brings us neatly to season 6, launching tomorrow (Wednesday 16 September). Judging by the early response, it's another belter. At the time of writing, the season has a perfect 100 per cent Rotten Tomatoes critic score, while Radio Times awarded it four stars, describing it as another "high-wire act of laughs and thrills".

Six seasons in, there is still no sign of the wheels coming off. Gary Oldman is still magnificent. Jack Lowden is still doing deceptively difficult work beside him. The writing, directing and ensemble remain among the best on television. So isn't it time the Emmys recognised more than just the machinery that makes Slow Horses work?

Otherwise, the series risks suffering the same fate as the titular Slow Horses themselves – persistently overlooked and underappreciated despite their considerable accomplishments.

That's an irony the show can live without.

Slow Horses is available to stream on Apple TV. Season 6 will be released from 16 September. Start your seven-day free Apple TV trial.

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