A review of this week's Slow Horses, "Circus" — with spoilers — coming up just as soon as I spend your change on cherries...
Alan Sepinwall
"Circus," the penultimate chapter of Season Five, brings this year's story into proper focus. It belatedly reveals that the terrorists are Libyans, who are seeking revenge on the U.K. for interfering with their own government in the past. This is among the series' bigger deviations from the source material, since my understanding is that in London Rules, the bad guys are North Korean. I can't speak to how well-drawn the book characters are. But there's a long history of Western entertainment using Middle Eastern characters as generi all-purpose bad guys. So there's only value to using villains from that part of the world if you're going to subvert the cliche and turn them into actual characters. And after five episodes of watching these guys drive around in their van, I not only couldn't tell you their names, but tell you what is meant to distinguish any one of them from the others.