No spoilers! Despite many many many people over the past several years telling me that a) “that Apple show Slow Horses is very good” and b) “Colby, you’d like it!” I had until very recently avoided it. I felt like I had enough shows. But in the last month Emma and I have been feeling a lack of compelling TV (hello great media contraction) and as a result decided to FINALLY try out this Slow Horses show so many people had told me about. I’m glad I did! It’s fun! It’s got good characters! It has lots of surprises. At one point after a particularly surprising season one episode I quite genuinely said, “This show is full of surprises.”
So… because my own life has been a little bit boring — wake up, get to work an hour early, work on extracurricular work, then go to work work all day, get home, watch an episode of a TV show, work on extracurricular work, go to sleep, rinse, repeat… I figured I’d write about what exactly it is about Slow Horses that is working for me, why I think it’s a good TV show, and what we as writers can learn from watching good TV shows.
But, before we get too deep into Slow Horses land, I want to highlight the fact that… TODAY, FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 19th, at 1:15PM PT we will be having a LIVE ZOOM MEETING for paid Hollyweird subscribers.
This is our quarterly “shareholders” meeting, and I will be sharing a behind the scenes look at subscriber growth, and comparing the growth here on Substack to the growth I’ve seen (over less time) on instagram and TikTok.
So… if you’re interested in some REAL DATA on subscribers, growth, paid subscriptions, and just general social media stuff — as well as the chance to ask craft & career questions of me in live time… there’s still time to sign up for a paid subscription. [And just a note on paid subscriptions — if you are someone who wants the perks of that, but simply cannot afford it, whether you’re a student or simply juggling a lot of jobs — just send me a message and I will gift you a free paid subscription. I do not want an $8/mo investment to keep you from getting resources you’d like to have for your career. Just message me. No questions asked! This is my newsletter and I can do whatever I want!]
Ok, enough self-promotion. Let’s talk about WHY Slow Horses is such a compelling show, and what lessons we can take from it. I promise this post will be SPOILER FREE and also I think whether you’re into this show in particular or not, there are lessons we can all take for our own work.
We love characters who are exceptionally gifted.
The premise of Slow Horses is that we are with a bunch of spies who have been shunted into the most dead end office of the British intelligence agency, run by Gary Oldman. So, while these are not necessarily “the best of the best of the best,” they are still, very good at what they do. Take a look at hit shows over the last few decades and you will find a pattern: ER, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Pitt, Sherlock, CSI, House (which is basically Sherlock with medicine), High Potential, The Mentalist, Homeland… we love shows about experts. People who are exceptionally gifted at doing the thing they do. There is something remarkably satisfying about competency, and seeing something get solved / resolved by characters. When a show manages to make meaning out of chaos — we feel satisfied as an audience. Give us experts! We want to be rooting for them to succeed when all odds point to failure.
We love characters who are flawed.
Inherent in the premise of the show is that these are people overcoming their own demons / pasts. Everyone who works at Slough House (the reason they’re called Slow Horses) is remarkably flawed. Gary Oldman is a drunk slob who farts a lot. River is a naive newbie with a chip on his shoulder. Ho, the tech guy is an egotistical maniac. We like flaws! They’re fun! They make the characters more relatable, and it also provides fun group dynamics when you pair different people together.
We love a puzzle.
If you look at that list of hit shows with geniuses I mentioned above, a lot of them are medical mysteries. We love puzzles. Puzzles, when they are smart, make us feel smart. Puzzles even when they aren’t that smart, give us the feeling of resolution, something that is severely lacking within the real world. We love getting to see puzzle pieces come together, and we love being on the ride with characters as they figure it out. As Billy Wilder used to say that Ernst Lubitsch used to say: “Let the audience add up two plus two. They'll love you forever.” It’s true! And if we can be doing that at the same time as our characters… chef’s kiss!
We love genuine surprises.
Baked into the premise of the spy thriller genre is… a lot of backstabbing and secret motivations and double crossing. These are fun! We like the twisty turny machinations of a story that manages to surprise us. Now… there are fake surprises in film & tv too — artificial shock chords meant to drum up tension, characters behaving out of character so something can happen… But when the surprises feel genuinely surprising, we love it!
We love hurting our heroes.
Don’t pull your punches. We love getting to see our heroes in pain. Physically, sure, but emotionally more than anything! Take away the only person they know they can rely on! Have them be betrayed! Force them to betray someone else! Moral compromises and psychological pain aren’t necessarily what we want in our day to day life, but they are absolutely what we crave from storytelling.
Anything I missed? Any other great stuff about Slow Horses that we should be taking with us into the shows we write? Let me know in the comments or send me an email!
What else is going on in Hollyweird, you ask?
If you’re looking for the link to the shareholders meeting promised above, keep scrolling. It’s behind the paywall below…
I just subscribed to
’s newsletter and find her writing about writing to be extremely insightful. I especially liked this piece of hers.
My friend Russell Hainline (who I interviewed here) and I are going to do an Instagram Live Q&A about writing, craft, and our careers. So if you have questions about breaking into the business, writing on spec, writing on assignment, and especially for him, writing for Hallmark (!), come find us on instagram Saturday Sept 27 at 10AM PT.
Jimmy Kimmel’s sudden silencing by his corporate overlords has prompted me to cancel Disney+ and Hulu and I think you should too. The only thing any of these maniacs respect is $$$
I am currently reading Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s (of Fleishman is in Trouble, very good) second book Long Island Compromise and really enjoying it!
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