I found myself laughing for page after page. And the beautifully plotted stories, which invariably twist and turn so often that it’s a wonder the whole thing doesn’t end up bound into a knot at the end. Second, the finely drawn characterizations of the misfits and ne’er-do-wells of Slough House, every one of them a gem. Herron’s prose is fresh and clever to a fault. The Slough House novels stand out for three reasons from the crowd of espionage fiction filling bookstore shelves. A beautifully plotted story, twisting and turning all the way And it explodes on the pages of his eighth Slow Horse novel, Bad Actors, which is laugh-out-loud funny.
Still, there is, sadly, something missing in the TV adaptation: Herron’s humor. The supporting cast does an equally stellar job. Not just the stars, the accomplished actors Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, shine on-screen. And there is, indeed, much to praise in the way Apple TV+ has conveyed Mick Herron’s Slough House crew to the series now streaming online. We rejoice when the characters a novelist has created emerge full-bodied on the screen. All too often, that means the screenwriter has ignored or butchered every shred of value in the writing. When books are adapted for film or television, something is invariably lost.