Just Culture #8: Four Seasons of Slow Horses in Review
What can we learn about leadership?
Just Culture brings you reviews and thoughts from all spectrums of culture in a timely and untimely fashion.
Slow Horses is an accredited show on Apple TV+, and the fifth season has yet to be released. Every new season tops the Apple TV most-watched chart. It’s a show created by Will Smith and based on the novel series by Mick Herron, “Slough House”. It tells about a bunch of MI5 “rejects and has-beens” piled up in their hope of being forgotten division in a building far from HQ, run by a drunkard legend who created the place so he could live out his days drinking on the job without getting fired. “Slough House” agents are commonly known as “Slow Horses”.
The speech featured at the beginning of the trailer sets the tone of the entire series and is quite entertaining. The main characters are well-acted, and the dynamics are amusing to watch, but most of the side characters feel a bit shallow, and the series doesn’t have to build them up before they decide to get rid of them. Nonetheless, the show got an 8,2 average on IMDB, 98% Tomatometer & 91% Popcommenter. That’s top-of-the-line.
You won’t have Mission Impossible-type action packing, and the storylines feel a bit more down-to-earth and realistic, which generally works for the show. However, it’s not one of those shows where “if you’d known,” you’d watch all the seasons, but you get hooked when you start watching. I would’ve skipped seasons two and three, only watching one and four, as the character’s build-ups are better and focused on the main characters.
I’m still looking forward to season five, as number four was better than #3, and whenever Jackson Lamb (the old bastard) is on the screen, it will drop some entertaining one-liners. If that’s not entertaining, here’s a “slow horse from Slough house” courtesy of ChatGPT.
Lesson about leadership
A notion that crossed my mind, like with the show The Bear featured in Just Thoughts #23, for a team with such a dysfunctional communication style, they still seem to function as a team. It makes you wonder if it’s truly only in the movies that it works, and if so, it’s quite a horrible example nonetheless. To its credit, you’d rather have someone talking shit to you, being brutally honest but always there when your life is on the line, than someone who’s being nice to you but never there when you actually need them.
What do you think? Can such toxic behavior work in “real life,” or is that just for our entertainment?
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