PRODUCTION SLOW HORSES
YOU WANT THINGS TO BE REALLY tactile, SO IT ISN’T SMOOTH FINISHES – it’s rough edges ” “What I really loved about Defence of the Realm is how it combined London with that type of story,” Cohen says. “It did it brilliantly.” Slow Horses does too, eschewing the city’s obvious sites and sounds and focusing on lesser-known spots. Cohen’s use of office buildings, for example, echoes the work of acclaimed photographer Andreas Gursky. “London is a very photogenic city,” says Cohen, “and it would be easy to lapse into ticking off the landmarks. The show is on Apple, it’s got an international audience, but London’s got a lot more to offer than that. So with the location manager, I’m always trying to find bits of London that are under-photographed.” Again, it’s about subverting expectation, something that becomes apparent in Season 4 when the show moves to France. “You could easily fall into lazy stereotypes of what a French rural town would feel like, with a cafe,
ROLE MODELS Each season introduces new cast members, including Joanna Scanlan (above)
boulangerie and nice square. Rather than go down that road, we wanted everything to be a bit shitty. The streets are empty, everybody’s unfriendly.” He laughs, “I’m sure the French tourist board hates us. But that’s what’s amazing – we are pretty much given free rein.” The same is true of the palette. Slow Horses is a beautifully coloured series. “It’s all about the atmosphere and the texture. You want things to be really tactile, so it isn’t smooth finishes. It’s all rough edges.”
Shooting the series, he says, is a bit like putting together a 3D jigsaw puzzle, “because inevitably you revisit locations. So that’s something you have to bear in mind. You revisit sets and it takes five or six months to shoot a series that in essence only happens in 72 hours. So you’re stretching screen time in a weird way. And you’re stretching the seasons. “When you’re filming for five or six months, it is potentially two seasons. So you’re going from spring to summer or autumn to winter or winter to spring. Just from a practical point of view, you have to think about how long a day is in relationship to how long the nights are.” Season 4 features quite a lot of night shoots, which prompted a switch in camera choice. While the earlier seasons were shot with the ARRI ALEXA Mini LF, for Season 4, Cohen switched to the ALEXA 35. “It’s a lot faster and, partly because we had a lot of night shoots to do, I felt that was quite a good choice, and it did work out well. “I really enjoyed this season. The show has become a bit of a monster but I have a lot of fun doing it.”
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