Slow Horses (Season 6)

Slow Horses changed showrunners this season. And while I think this was capable television that accomplished exactly what it set out to do, I'm finding that the past three and a half seasons of the show — which is to say, starting with the climactic sequence of Slow Horses (Season 3) in all of its bang-bang shoot-'em-up glory — have drifted increasingly orthogonal to what I loved so much about the first season. I would argue that the show has two main themes: Institutions prioritize their own survival above anything else, and accordingly reward the individuals who are good at prioritizing their own survival. People don't change. Events calcify them rather than transform them. Every season of Slow Horses delivers arguments in favor of these two theses. Sometimes the arguments are small, like Shirley's aside about what to do with scary feelings: bottle them up, push them down, and keep pushing them down, and never stop pushing them down. Sometimes they're large, like the show's overall…