How many seasons of Slow Horses will there be? Gary Oldman has named the two things that decide it
Slow Horses is the rarest thing on television: a prestige show that actually shows up. Six seasons in four years, no three-year "we're crafting the vision" gaps, no apology posts.
Season 6 hits Apple TV this week, season 7 is already filmed, and the only real question left is how long Gary Oldman intends to keep marinating in Jackson Lamb's raincoat. He's given us an answer, and it's refreshingly unsentimental.
The math so far
Five seasons have aired since 2022, each adapting one of Mick Herron's Slough House novels. Season 6 — which brings back Hugo Weaving's Frank Harkness and covers books six and seven — premieres September 16, with the already-shot season 7 waiting in the wings. Apple formally renewed through 7 back when season 5 hadn't even aired, which is streaming-era confidence you almost never see.
And the shelf isn't empty: Herron's Clown Town is sitting right there for a potential season 8, plus novellas, plus whatever he writes next. The source material is not the bottleneck.
The two things, per the man himself
So how long does this go? Oldman laid it out plainly in an interview with TV Insider ahead of the season 6 premiere. Thing one: Mick Herron keeps writing — Oldman assumes he will, and the show's whole quality-control trick is that the scripts are anchored to finished novels instead of a panicked writers' room. Thing two, in his words:
"If Apple is happy with us and keeps writing the checks, they're the ultimate — they'll be the ones to keep it going or end it."
That's it. That's the whole formula. The books and the checks. Not a mystical creative journey, not "when the story tells us it's done." An author and an accounting department. I find this weirdly soothing.
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The annual-release fight you didn't know he was fighting
Here's the part that made me respect the man even more: the show's famously punctual schedule isn't a happy accident. Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, where he collected a Global Icon Award, Oldman revealed that keeping the show annual is a "struggle and a fight" he personally wages — because he hates what long gaps do to viewers who've invested in fictional people.
Gary Oldman, Oscar winner, spends part of his year arguing that you shouldn't have to wait two and a half years for your show. Protect him.
The machine does have costs — creator Will Smith stepped away after season 5, citing exactly that relentless pace — but the pipeline (write one, shoot one, edit one, forever) keeps humming.
So: seven seasons guaranteed, an eighth sitting on the bookshelf, and after that it's down to a novelist in Oxford and a checkbook in Cupertino. As long as both keep moving, Lamb keeps lighting cigarettes in doctor's offices. Honestly, the healthiest long-term relationship in television.
Previously we wrote: Where was Practical Magic 2 filmed? The locations, and why the Owens house had to be rebuilt from scratch
