Slow Horses – Season 4 Episode 3 “Penny For Your Thoughts” Recap & Review

Penny For Your Thoughts

Episode 3 of Slow Horses season 4 starts with River waking up to the sound of bells chiming. He’s trapped inside the house, but he soon changes his tune when his rescuer shows up with a shotgun. The man retorts that someone is here to see River, and unfortunately our agent no longer has his phone either.

Meanwhile, David is in a panicked state. He’s convinced he’s killed River and tells Catherine that something is coming. He knows about the bomb and wants to speak to First Desk. Catherine plays up the roll of secretary to calm him down, but David continues to mention how this is his fault.

Jackson Lamb returns to the office and finds an unwelcome visitor. He quickly tasks Louisa with moving David, before showing up and seeing Emma Flynne waiting in his office. They’ve done the bloodwork on the body and know that the deceased is not River.

She’s going to bring River in for impeding an investigation, and he’s taken away in cuffs. On the stairs though, Jackson decides to use David as collateral. He strikes a deal with Emma and for now, it seems like Lamb has the upper-hand.

Emma shows up to see Catherine at her apartment. This was the intel she was given and after frantically looking around, realizes that she’s been played as David isn’t there. 

In reality, Catherine has moved David to “the safehouse”, which happens to be her neighbour’s place. Unfortunately, when she and Louisa show up, they find the backdoor open and David has gone walkabouts.

Back at MI5, Claude decides to use Giti on-duty to work outside Diana’s knowledge. Specifically, he wants her to double-check the cold body archives, something Diana has not agreed to, to see if there are any other agents out in the field. Molly and Claude butt heads while Giti checks the files.

River finally sees his visitor, which happens to be a woman called Natasha. The thing is, this is actually Winters’ mother. But Winters is an alias, as his actual name appears to be Bertrand.

River is quick to reveal exactly what’s happened with David. After revealing the truth, he’s allowed to go but River refuses. He has the photo and he wants to know who Bertrand’s siblings are before there’s another bombing.

The menacing man with a shotgun is called Victor, and he happens to be Natasha’s cousin. Frank Harkness seems to be the patriarch of this family, but it may not even be his real name.

Victor hit Frank for trying to kill him and the bomber’s name is Yves. He was treated poorly as a child, so for Natasha, she’s not surprised that he reacted that way. She lived at the mansion for a while and it turns out one of the other women did the painting in the bedroom.

Bertrand is not well-liked in the area, namely because of an assault and battery against one of the men’s daughters. The unruly mob outside can’t be quelled by Victor, so River is forced to flee.

Jackson finds out that David’s bagman, Sam Chapman, went to France in the early 90’s. However, there’s no record of David himself going. Jackson rings Chapman and they agree to meet. However, Frank is having Chapman watched, and it appears he’s the next target, followed by Jackson.

Chapman is being followed though, and he rings Jackson to confirm as much. Marcus and Shirley are both called into action, but the former has just sold his gun to pay off gambling debts so he’s not exactly going to be much use.

The tail follows Chapman but Marcus comes bumbling in and is immediately shoved hard through a glass window. Shirley wraps up a shard of glass and follows but the tail is way ahead of the game.

Inside a garage, Marcus and Shirley both get involved and start duking it out with this guy. He easily overpowers them all, until Jackson comes in with a taxi and runs him down. Unfortunately, he hightails it out before Jackson gets a chance to interrogate him.

The Episode Review

Slow Horses returns and the midway point of this series sees River finally learn a bit more about what he’s dealing with when it comes to the bombing family. I’m sure we’re going to learn more about Frank in the second half of this series, but for now it appears we’re in for an action-packed ride to get there.

The show has done well so far to keep things interesting, and the mystery is perfectly balanced alongside the comedy and drama, which are just as good as they’ve been before.

It helps that the show is filmed back to back because you really feel a sense of energy and a similar style oozing through this one. Ultimately, Slow Horses has been a solid watch and it’ll be interesting to see where this one goes next.