The current season of Slow Horses has once again won over both critics and viewers – but if you’re not familiar with the original book series, there’s a moment in the latest episode that will undoubtedly have hit like a bolt from the blue.
Now, if you haven’t watched the episode yet, we’re going to give you one last chance to bookmark this page and revisit it once you have, because we’re about to drop some major spoilers.
All good? OK, let’s continue…
The fourth episode of Slow Horses’ sixth season premiered on Wednesday, culminating in the death of fan-favourite and man-of-few-words J.K. Coe in a service station toilet knife fight.
Coe was played in the series by Tom Brooke, who has admitted since the episode aired that he had mixed feelings about the character’s ending.
“I thought I was all right about it until I picked up[the first novel in the Slough House novel series not to feature Coe] at the airport and I read two pages of it,” he told Town & Country. “I wouldn’t want to say I burst into tears, but I was like, ‘I can’t read this. I cannot engage with this world again because I’m not part of it’.
“And then I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not all right about it’.”
Similarly, he told Decider: “I can’t even remember my last day on set, but I did pick up Clown Town, the new book, at the airport the other day, and I read two pages, and I was so upset that I wasn’t in it anymore. I couldn’t read it. Just put it down.”
Elsewhere in his Town & Country interview, he opened up about just how important it was to get Coe’s death right.
He continued: “I read the books when I got the job, and the job was an offer of a three-season contract. So that was fine, but it was such a good death scene in the book that it was the first thing I talked about with the showrunner. And I was like, ‘As long as we’re heading to that and we get to do that, this is great’. And he said, ‘Yeah, we will in a couple of years’.”
Ultimately, Tom admitted that Coe’s final scene was originally written “not as close to the books as I was hoping”, so he went back to the show’s creative team about altering it.
“It was just the mundaneness of the [death scene] in the book [that appealed to me],” he said. “He talks about mortgages with the mercenary, how to get a mortgage self-employed, all of this sort of stuff [in the book].
“And it struck me as there’s such a logic to it that is so Coe because it’s so crazy. No one else would do it, but he’s interested. And at this stage where we see him, he wants to talk – and that’s the sad thing, but he’s finally got to a place where he’s wanting to engage with people, and that’s the end of him.”
Tom noted specifically that the detail of having Coe ask about pensions was his idea, as was giving the character a “push knife”, which creator Will Smith wasn’t even aware of until the actor suggested it.
Opening up more about Coe’s state of mind at the end of his life, Tom suggested to Collider: “I think he sees Jim coming when he’s at the driving game. [Coe] knows the deal. He knows they’re following him.
“For me, it was like he’s acing it. Whether he means to or not, he’s acing it. He’s saved River and Sid, he’s picked them up in the car, he’s done the bowling alley. They got away. Then he’s driven out of a shootout, and he’s done that.
“So, now he’s in the mood for a chat, and I just think it’s so typical of his oddness. But in the same way, I think it’s quite logical. He knows who this person is. They are both killers.”
He added: “I always had this idea that Coe was a psychopath because the more people he killed, the more human he felt — which is insane, but for him, that’s what’s happening.
“We see him at kind of peak Coe when we’re in the toilet with him, because he’s coming out of himself. So, at that stage, I was like, ‘Oh, I wonder what he’d be like if he wanted to chat’. And then obviously, you just go straight back to the books, and, ‘Oh, well, that’s what he’s like’.”
The final two episodes of Slow Horses’ sixth season are coming to Apple TV+ on 14 and 21 October.
