The first time I heard of Slow Horses was a year or so before it began airing, when a TV company wanted to talk with me because a script of mine was like it. Quite possibly they just meant the subject matter was, but I took it at the time to be a compliment and of course having now seen the show, I’m taking it as an even greater one.<\/p>\n
But there is one thing about the writing of this show. It is a dramatisation of Mick Herron’s novels and with a vague sense of due diligence, after I met with that company, I read the first one. I don’t think I can claim that it was then with an abundance of due diligence that I went on to read every novel in this Slough House series back to back, but that’s what I did.<\/p>\n
And there is this one thing about the TV version. The novels are very visual, I could see how I’d have had a go at dramatising them, except for this one thing that, no question, would be beyond me and is beyond me.<\/p>\n
Roddy Ho.<\/p>\n
If you know the show or the novels, you relish this character, and if you don’t, I envy you having him to look forward to. He is a staggeringly annoying computer guy, more arrogant than the sun and I don’t know why I just said it that way, except he also as absolutely wrong in his view of the world as The Sun. <\/p>\n
But here’s the thing. The utter joy of Ho in the novels is that every now and again, Mick Herron writes a chapter from Ho’s point of view. I suppose it’s the same joke every time, but it’s a scream. How he sees the world and how through this lens, we see what is really happening. (In the latest Slough House novel, Clown Town, Ho overhears a barista talking about him to a colleague. He swaggers because of the impact he’s clearly had on her, just the latest example that morning of his raw sexuality. But what she’s muttered is “big cock”.)<\/p>\n
Roddy Ho is a tremendous creation and I could not fathom how a TV show was going to convey him when there couldn’t be this view from inside, this internal and borderline deranged first-person monologue. <\/p>\n
This would now be a good point to say that, five series in, the show does it marvellously. The show does it marvellously. But this would also be a good point for me to say how it’s done this and, swear to god, I still don’t know. There isn’t a beat I remember from the novels that isn’t played in the series, but if you asked me to write a scene, this would block me.<\/p>\n
It’s a failure of imagination on my part, I know. But I’d rather just say that Mick Herron writes Ho superbly, and so now do the TV show’s writers, Morwenna Banks, Mark Denton, Jonny Stockwood, Sean Gray, Edward Docx and lead writer Will Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first time I heard of Slow Horses was a year or so before it began airing, when a TV … Continue reading