Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos and this is our Friday chat show.

Today we are talking about Apple's growing hit, Slow Horses, one of those unique TV shows that seems universally loved by critics and fans alike.

Since it first came out two years ago, the show has maintained outrageously high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes,

and critics are currently begging you to go watch its fourth season, which is out now with a new one releasing every week.

The show is a spy thriller that's been called an anti-spy thriller.

It's sometimes serious, but often funny.

Its main character, Jackson Lamb, is played

by a slubby, slobby, stringy-haired Gary Oldman, not a neat, sexy James Bond. And Lamb is in charge

of a team of British spies at MI5, but not their top brass. He leads a group of misfits who've

been put on probation for previous misdeeds in a gross old building called the Slough House.

People have sent the Slough House for one or two reasons.

One, they're an absolute loser.

Speak for yourself.

And two, they've unwittingly pissed someone off.

The show is an adaptation of the Slough House book series by McHarran.

It stars some of the UK's best-known actors, like Kristen Scott Thomas and Olivia Cook of Game of Thrones fame.

And four seasons in, the question is whether slow horses can keep this momentum.

So let's get into it.

I'm Lila in New York, and I may or may not have shot my grandson this morning. With me today from London, he's had half a bottle of whiskey and is ready to solve a crime. It's the FTs magazine columnist and chief UK political commentator, Robert Trimsley. Hi, Robert. Welcome. Hi, Lila. Good to be here. Good to have you. Also in London, he's one of our Joes and you never give up a Joe. It's our chief features writer, Henry Mance. Hi, Henry. Hey, Lerla. Okay, so let me start by saying that this fourth season of slow horses is now three episodes in. We have had access to all six in the series. We're going to do our best

not to spoil it for listeners. But I have the feeling that maybe one of you at least may have watched the whole thing. Is that true? How far have you both gotten in it? Oh, I have watched it all. Yeah. I've got all the way to the end. Okay, cool. What about you, Henry? I don't trust myself not to blur stuff out, so I've

only watched the first three, actually. Okay, cool. Okay, tell me where you're coming to this show

from. Have you read the books? Have you been a fan of the show since the start? And what you

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