I should know, it's the only one I've seen

There was no show I heard about more during the holiday season than Slow Horses. As a TV editor, this is an anecdotal investigation that made me sit up and take notice. Seemingly everyone I spoke to, at holiday parties or on vacation, was enthralled by the British spy drama on Apple TV Plus; some people spread more about the show than they did their own children. Not one to be left out of the conversation, I threw myself into the third season. And that's where I found the best kind of holiday gift: a great season of TV and even more to watch as soon as I can.

The beauty of Slow Horses – as anyone at any of these gatherings would tell you – lies in how tightly the show is constructed. Based on the Slough House novels by Mick Herron, each season adapts a book in six compact episodes, following the lives of the intelligence officers who work in "Slough House" in MI5. Having not seen the pilot where such names and designations can be explained, I can only say that Slough House is a sort of dumping ground for MI5 agents who messed up. Instead of being fired, they are relegated (convicted, condemned) to dead-end work under the careless Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman).

But since each book and season is more or less self-contained, it's pretty easy to come into Season 3 and pick up everything you need to know about Slough House and its horses — namely, that they're actually exceptional agents, even if they're a little rough around the edges the edges than their brethren assigned elsewhere. At its center is River (Jack Lowden), the hapless spy who always tries to do the right thing™, whose career was halted when he was accused of something dirty. But you also have Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar), who is equal parts abrasive and efficient, and Roddy (Christopher Chung), a skilled hacker whose main weakness seems to be a lack of motivation to do much beyond mischief if left to his druthers. No one is more deceptively skilled than Jackson, who Oldman plays with the perfect balance of gruff charm. He hates to say a single friendly thing, or even seem to play the game, but he rudely always is.