PEL Presents PMP#211: Slow Horses and Predecessors
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We discuss the British spy show based on the novels of Mick Herron, which are in turn firmly in a tradition of anti-007 books by John le Carré. Featuring Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn and Al. The point is not to glamorize the spy service, but to use realism and black humor to stress the human cost and general boredom of this work along with the dysfunctional nature of the institutions involved.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is pretty much poppy culture podcast, a collection of the misfits who couldn't hack it at the park. |
| 0:12.9 | Today we're discussing the Apple TV show Slow Horses. It started in 2022. |
| 0:17.4 | It has just concluded its fifth season based on the novels by Mick Herron that began in 2010, adapted by Will Smith, but not that one. |
| 0:25.5 | This is Mark Linson-Myier, king of my own little domain. |
| 0:28.7 | This is Al Baker, and I'll tell you one thing I've learned about podcasting. |
| 0:31.9 | It's a strange guy. |
| 0:34.9 | I'm Sarah Lynn Bruck, and I am totally knackered and chuffed watching this very British show on the telly, |
| 0:40.9 | like I had just stepped out of a patro-fueled Lori, finding my way to my mates, |
| 0:45.8 | navigating with my sat-nav, wearing my wellies, and after eating kippers and chips that cost about three quid, |
| 0:52.0 | then tossing them into the bin since they seemed a little |
| 0:54.6 | dodgy. I tell you, this is a proper show in it? |
| 0:58.3 | Holy shit. What the fuck was that? What was the first thing you said? We're not going to break |
| 1:03.9 | that down line by line. It was, let's just respect it. Oh my gosh. I just genuinely |
| 1:10.7 | couldn't pass the first two words. |
| 1:15.3 | That's all you need. I'm Sarah Lynn Brooke. Let me just do my thing because mine is |
| 1:19.5 | hella short and we can go back to breaking down. This is Lawrence Ware coming to you from Oklahoma. |
| 1:24.3 | And I have a hole in my sock, but I'm the smartest guy in the room. Okay, I'm very straightforward. Very straightforward. So this was Al's suggestion, obviously. Obviously, wait, obviously? Are you saying this because he's British? And it's a British show? I wasn't even the first person to suggest doing this. I think we've all been saying that we loved a show for ages. |
| 1:45.1 | Yeah. |
| 1:45.8 | Get out of here with this, obviously. I've watched Low Horses from the beginning. Don't start with that. All right. All right. And Sarah, you had... That's racist, Mark. You had also been doing this on your own time, Sarah, right? So this is not a... 100%. Yeah. No, we've been watching it since the beginning. |
| 2:00.1 | The downside of not having |
| 2:01.3 | anybody who just like i haven't been watching this i have to catch up and watch all the seasons |
| 2:04.9 | right away is there's nobody who has all of it fresh so oh no i watched it all from the beginning |
... |
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