Peacock's 'Slow Horses But Better' Spy Series Is Returning At The Perfect Time
Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.
Even though most critics can agree that Slow Horses is the best spy series on TV right now, that doesn’t mean that Peacock’s returning hit can’t steal that title when the show comes back in 2027. It’s a great time to be a fan of spy shows. Recent movie flops like Argyle, Black Bag, and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, along with the long wait for Bond 26, prove that spy movies are enduring something of a drought when it comes to critical and commercial popularity.
However, in their absence, the spy show is flourishing. Apple TV’s Slow Horses has essentially reinvented the genre, adapting author Mick Herron’s Slough House novel series into a deadpan, witty, and deceptively dark and gritty story of the everyday spies who keep espionage functioning. Part workplace comedy and part dark character drama, Slow Horses successfully proved that not all spy shows need constant car chases and gun fights to keep viewers invested.
Ironically, more traditional spy shows like Amazon’s expensive Citadel franchise, The Agency, Ponies, Black Doves, The Copenhagen Test, The Asset, 2024's Mr. & Mrs. Smith show, and even Taylor Sheridan’s huge hit Lioness have all struggled to recapture the almost universal acclaim of Slow Horses. That said, the higher a show rises, the further it has to potentially fall, and just after Slow Horses's latest season faltered a little bit, Peacock announced that their hit spy show Day of the Jackal will be back in 2027 to rival the hit.
The Day Of The Jackal Can Overtake Slow Horses As TV's Best Spy Series
In an era when there are so many spy series to choose from, as outlined above, all of them need a unique hook to get viewers invested. The hook of Slow Horses is one borrowed and adapted from John le Carré’s George Smiley stories, with the misfit agents of Slough House representing the more humdrum, less glamorous side of espionage. Like Smiley, the antiheroes of Slow Horses aren’t as slick as 007 or as sexy as most of his imitators, but this only serves to make their stories more endearing and relatable.
Similarly, 2024’s The Day Of The Jackal has a killer hook to draw viewers in. The show begins with Eddie Redmayne’s placid, terrifying title character, the unstoppable assassin The Jackal, pulling off a seemingly impossible sniper kill to the shock and complete bemusement of law enforcement and spy agencies alike. Unlike her higher-ups, No Time To Die star Lashana Lynch’s heroic spy Bianca refuses to concede that the shot was impossible, and this sends her on a lone quest to take down the show’s eponymous villain.
What follows is a cat and mouse game as The Jackal tracks down his next target, a tech billionaire, while Bianca attempts to capture him before he can strike again. Based on author Frederick Forsyth’s classic novel of the same name, previously adapted as a movie in 1973, The Day Of The Jackal’s hook is that the daring spy series splits its spy story between Bianca and the Jackal, granting a surprising amount of screen time and sympathy to a killer who proves unexpectedly enthralling.
Slow Horses' Seventh Season Will Be An Opportunity To Retake Its Crown
To be fair to Apple TV’s spy series, Slow Horses season 6 maintained its incredible Rotten Tomatoes score, so it would be tough for any spy series to compete with the show. That said, there are plenty of articles online, including on this very site, that detail the gripes viewers still had with the series, which some longtime fans feel has gotten too staid and predictable in its sixth outing.
As such, the return of The Day Of The Jackal in 2027 throws down a proverbial gauntlet for the creators of the Apple TV spy show. Either Slow Horses will return to the show’s extraordinary peak, or the already acclaimed The Day Of The Jackal will manage to nab its crown with a superior sophomore outing for the series.
- Network
- Sky Atlantic
- Directors
- Brian Kirk
- Writers
- Ronan Bennett
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The Jackal
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Lashana Lynch
Bianca
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Úrsula Corberó
Núria
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Charles Dance
Timothy Winthrop
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.