Netflix’s Answer to ‘Slow Horses’ Officially Returns in 10 Days

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema. 

With Apple TV having recently concluded the unanimously praised sixth season of Slow Horses, there’s a void that’s about to be filled by a returning Netflix series. Slow Horses has emerged as a major hit for Apple TV, standing in contrast to the streamer’s solid library of sci-fi shows. Based on a series of novels by Mick Herron and starring Gary Oldman, Slow Horses follows a group of disgraced spies assigned to an unglamorous wing of MI5. The series has drawn incredibly positive reviews over its six-season run, with the latest season receiving a perfect 100% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The returning Netflix series has its work cut out.

The show is on solid footing, though, having been acclaimed during its initial run. The problem is that Netflix has taken two years to bring it back, and viewership data suggests that a show is more likely to lose audiences the longer it takes between seasons. This year’s second season of The Gentlemen, for instance, saw a massive 45% decline in viewership during its opening week. Like that crime comedy, Netflix’s Slow Horses alternative also premiered in 2024. The show in question was created by Joe Barton, who previously worked on the acclaimed series Giri/Haji, The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself, and The Lazarus Project. More recently, he created the Sky Atlantic series Amadeus.

Six actors. One role. Your answers point to the Bond who shares your presence, your method, and your particular way of carrying the weight of being the most dangerous person in the room.

You are the original — and you carry that fact without needing to announce it. There is an authority in the way you occupy a room that others spend careers trying to replicate.

• You don’t explain yourself, justify yourself, or soften yourself for anyone’s comfort. The confidence is structural, not performed.
• Connery’s Bond established everything — the tone, the danger, the cool — because Connery himself had the innate presence to make something that had never existed feel inevitable.
• You share that quality: the sense that you were always going to end up exactly here, doing exactly this.
• The name is Bond. In your case, it always was.

You understand something that more serious people miss: that wit is its own form of intelligence, and that making people laugh is not a retreat from danger but a way of mastering it.

• Moore’s Bond is underrated precisely because the effortlessness looks easy — and effortlessness is the hardest thing to manufacture.
• You have the same quality: a lightness that disarms people before they realise how sharp you actually are.
• The raised eyebrow, the perfectly timed quip, the refusal to be rattled — these are not affectations. They are a philosophy about how to move through a world that would like to take itself too seriously.
• You have never let it.

You took the role seriously when everyone wanted you to coast — and that refusal to take the easy version of anything is the most defining thing about you.

• Dalton’s Bond has genuine moral weight: he feels the cost of what he does, he has lines he won’t cross, and he is not interested in the version of himself that pretends otherwise.
• You share that intensity. You push harder than the situation technically requires, because you have a standard and you hold yourself to it.
• He was ahead of his time — the Bond the franchise wasn’t quite ready for yet, arriving exactly when he was meant to.
• You know what that feels like.

You are the complete package — and you know it, which is part of what makes you so effective and occasionally so infuriating to the people around you.

• Brosnan arrived at the role looking exactly like Bond was supposed to look, and he delivered on that expectation with a professionalism that made it seem effortless.
• You have the same quality: a smooth competence, a charm that operates like a precision instrument, and the ability to make even difficult things look like they weren’t.
• His era was the most commercially successful in the franchise’s history. There is a reason for that.
• The reason is that some people simply fit their moment perfectly. You are one of those people.

You stepped into something enormous with less preparation than anyone around you thought was sufficient — and you delivered something genuine anyway, which is the more impressive achievement.

• Lazenby’s single outing is, by many measures, one of the finest Bond films ever made — and he is not a small part of why.
• You share his quality of raw authenticity: less polished than the alternatives, more honest for it, capable of something real that technique alone can’t produce.
• He was underestimated, and then he wasn’t, and then history caught up with him.
• You are the kind of person history catches up with. Give it time.

You stripped everything back and found what was underneath — and what was underneath was harder, more honest, and more human than anyone expected.

• Craig’s Bond is the franchise’s most psychologically complete: a man doing a brutal job, carrying its costs imperfectly, capable of love and loss in ways that can’t be dismissed.
• You share that depth. You don’t hide behind the role or the charm or the suit — you let the work show what it actually costs.
• He was controversial from the moment he was announced and definitive by the time he was finished. The sceptics became the believers.
• That arc — of being underestimated and then undeniable — is one you know intimately.

Here’s When the Netflix Spy Thriller Will Return

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image: Mathew Towers/Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image: Mathew Towers/Netflix

But we’re talking about the espionage thriller Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw as covert operatives of a clandestine organization. Also featuring Sarah Lancashire as their handler, the series received positive reviews upon its release in December 2024. It now holds a “Certified Fresh” 92% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Blending multiple genres into a truly unique action-thriller, Black Doves hits its target dead on.” With new cast members such as Neve Campbell, Ambika Mod, Sam Riley, and Babou Ceesay, the second season of Black Doves will debut on Netflix on November 5. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

Black Doves

Black Doves is a drama series that centers on the complex interplay of espionage and personal relationships. Focused on Helen Webb, a seasoned spy striving to balance her covert missions with a turbulent family life, the series delves into themes of loyalty, betrayal, and sacrifice. Starring Keira Knightley, it examines the moral ambiguities faced by those who live double lives in service to their countries.