PRODUCTION SLOW HORSES
WORDS Will Lawrence
Cinematographer Danny Cohen talks us through the latest season of slick spy thriller Slow Horses
G ary Oldman puts it very to have a whiz!’” The Oscar-winning actor is the leading man on Apple TV+’s darkly comic spy series Slow Horses , playing the brilliant, if somewhat irascible Jackson Lamb. He’s the leader of a troop of MI5 agents dumped in Slough House – the home of those who have made career-crippling mistakes. These are professional spies, but they are not James Bond. They are not Jason Bourne. “ Slow Horses is about real people we can relate to,” adds Oldman. “You’re always looking for material that can be light and dark and have a frequency and consistency. I think we’ve found the perfect balance of humour and drama. It’s real and yet, by degree, it’s slightly succinctly: “Sean Connery never said, ‘Hang on a second, I need
heightened. It’s got edge. People try it and it doesn’t always work.” It works on Slow Horses . The filmmakers have shot five seasons – number four airs in September – and it has maintained consistently high standards. The excellent cast (also including Kristin Scott Thomas, Jack Lowden and Saskia Reeves), novelist Mick Herron’s strong source material and screenwriter Will Smith’s canny adaptation all contribute to this success. So does the strategy of constantly hiring the same accomplished filmmakers. Cinematographer Danny Cohen, for example, has shot every episode on Seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5. “To keep coming back, I’ve never done anything like this before,” begins Cohen, a regular collaborator with renowned
British TV and film directors including Stephen Poliakoff, Stephen Frears, Tom Hooper and Shane Meadows. “Essentially, everybody comes back on Slow Horses , which is crazy, and you don’t want to disappoint. That means you’re constantly pushing things, and what’s great about the production is that they’re all on board with that. They’re not skimping. You definitely get the sense on some series or streamers that the wind gets pulled out of their sail and they can lose energy the longer they go on.” With six episodes per season, Cohen has now filmed 24 over a three-year period, “which is totally ridiculous,” he says. “It’s a bit like shooting 20 or so feature films in that time frame.” And it’s been consistently rewarding. He has shot a series that is full of characterful
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