‘Slow Horses’ S5 Finale, ‘Down Cemetery Road’ Premiere, and ‘The Lowdown’ E7

Chris and Andy talk about the latest news on the future Taylor Sheridan–NBCUniversal partnership, including the reported amount of his deal and how many shows the studio wants from him (8:50). Then they break down the ‘Slow Horses’ Season 5 finale (18:36), the two-episode premiere of ‘Down Cemetery Road’ (30:19), and the penultimate episode of ‘The Lowdown’ (43:09). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Video Producer: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:00Andy Greenwald?

  I ain't sports to have to play with. Stand up and walk now.

• 2:06Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me on the other line, the VJ Edgecombe of prestige British mysteries, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:23Andy Greenwald?

  That's the nicest thing you've ever said about me. That is such a compliment right now.

• 2:26Chris Ryan?

  What's up dude? Oh, I feel pretty good, man. I'm feeling like 90% happy right now.

• 2:34Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, what percentage of the 90% is due to having a basketball team again?

• 2:39Chris Ryan?

  Well, 82, I think, is probably like the feeling of having a 4-0 NBA team is pretty exciting.

• 2:46Andy Greenwald?

  Feels pretty good.

• 2:47Chris Ryan?

  I'm fired up about that. I'm fired up about getting to see you in London next week, which I'm really excited about. I hate to tell you this, but I had a great night's sleep last night, so.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  I did too. I did too. Good, okay. Andy's been having some sleeping struggles.

• 3:03Chris Ryan?

  You want to know what the 10% problem is? I hate to use my platform here as a bully pulpit, but I have to address a major pharmaceutical corporation. Maybe. I don't even know if it's a pharmaceutical.

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, can I stop you? I feel like Tyneals had a bit of a tough time already. Like, I just let them be.

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  My preferred nicotine lozenge has changed its coating and I think chemical compound. So I need Trump and Xi to figure this out and get me whatever thing is in these things and take away this Tic Tac Sweet flavor that they've put on it, bring back my mint, and just bring back my milligram hit that I need.

• 3:48Andy Greenwald?

  Can I ask you something? You know, you are... I can't speak to this world. You are on your own journey. And I respect it from a healthy, literally distance. But I do wonder if you're going to be ultimately happier when you come over here to the UK, because one thing that I do enjoy, and this is me trying to relate to you, is that. Well, no, it's gonna be about Doritos.

• 4:12Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:13Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I don't know if we've talked about this, but no, the fact that literally everyone here just exhales candy apple smoke from all sorts of USB devices into your face, no matter where you're standing at any time, whether you're inside or outside.

• 4:25Chris Ryan?

  Watermelon bubble yum flavor vapes.

• 4:27Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's so crazy. No, it's not that. It's that so here, if you get a bag of like Cool Ranch Doritos as one might.

• 4:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 4:36Andy Greenwald?

  They don't taste like Cool Ranch Doritos do at home because due to, I don't know, laws, they can't put in the chemicals that they put into our Doritos and they kinda zhuzh it up a little bit, but it, at first it's very weird because it doesn't taste like it's supposed to. In fact, it just tastes about 60% less taste and it's like vaguely like there's milk or dairy in it. And then you start to realize like, oh, I, I am Neo in the matrix. Like I've just never used my taste buds before. This is pretty nice. So I'm wondering if you come over here and you start popping nicotine candies or whatever they are, you might appreciate a different flavor profile. Do you know what I mean? Like it might be more natural.

• 5:18Chris Ryan?

  To me, the 60% that you're talking about, that, that flavor that we Americans bring to the table, that's why we won World War II, you know?

• 5:29Andy Greenwald?

  It's really true. It's really true. Do you know, I mean, I've heard it said three different ways by three different people about what they like about Americans.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  And it, sometimes I don't think they mean it, but they're all basically saying the same thing. I've heard it phrased as enthusiasm.

• 5:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:44Andy Greenwald?

  I've heard it phrased as confidence and I've heard it phrased as self-esteem. And maybe that's the cooler ranch that we.

• 5:54Chris Ryan?

  But don't they know that Americans are all dying on the inside and crippled with like anxiety and emotional distress?

• 6:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I've been proving that to them for the last four weeks.

• 6:04Chris Ryan?

  I'm, I, I feel like when I, when I'm on my like, on the verge of going to England, I always have to like do a few kind of meditative self sessions and just be like, take it down 10%, man. Cause I think it's like, I'm always on microphone, but also my natural personality is pretty effusive and like, you know?

• 6:24Andy Greenwald?

  Do you remember the story? Like I was in.

• 6:27Chris Ryan?

  You just can't say what's up, man, to anyone in England.

• 6:32Andy Greenwald?

  The problem is, I think New Yorkers do better because when we were New Yorkers, we were like many New Yorkers, which is just basically just about our business, like moving between places.

• 6:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Andy Greenwald?

  And then I've talked about this, how like within eight days of moving to LA, I became so soft that when I returned to New York, I went to buy a bottle of water at the bodega. And I was like, how's your day doing, friend? And the guy looked at me like I had just like asked to see pictures of his children nude. And I realized now that like the California part, that's the American part.

• 7:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:05Andy Greenwald?

  So like when we were here, when we were here, after we went to that Norway thing a year and a half ago, and we were out in the countryside. And I went, it was a small pub and like was standing by the kitchen to like ask for, I don't even know what it was, silverware or something. And there was a woman next to me and she was talking to the chef, saying how she really, really wanted to get a pepperoni pizza, you know? But like, but I was there first, so you know, what did I, what did I need or whatever?

• 7:32Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 7:33Andy Greenwald?

  And I said, oh, I'm sorry, I'm just here to get a big bowl of pepperoni.

• 7:37Chris Ryan?

  Did you really?

• 7:38Andy Greenwald?

  Cause I thought it was like, yeah, I was like sort of, and she sort of looked at me and she went, you know, humor's a bit pushy, isn't it? It's like, I didn't know that. I thought we were all just like, we're all just having a good time. And, uh, no, no. It happened again. I bought an umbrella the other day because newsflash, it's fucking raining.

• 7:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Andy Greenwald?

  And I, I finished up my interaction with the woman, you know, paid for it. And I was like, I'm, she said, please, you know, have a good day. And I said, thank you. I'm glad that this is the first time I've ever planned in advance for anything.

• 8:09Chris Ryan?

  But do you think-

• 8:10Andy Greenwald?

  And she stared blankly at me.

• 8:11Chris Ryan?

  Well, do you think if we went into Rough Trade Records or Foils Books or someplace in London and acted like-

• 8:19Andy Greenwald?

  The real mom and pop shops.

• 8:20Chris Ryan?

  But acted like a British person, right? And first of all, I don't like your like slight disparaging of British institutions like Foils and Dushum. Like when I go to Dushum, I feel like you roll your eyes. Second of all-

• 8:33Andy Greenwald?

  I don't roll my eyes. Dushum is a treasure. There are other places, but go on. Yeah, all right.

• 8:40Chris Ryan?

  When you go in and you, like, do you think if we tried to act more English when we bought something and we were just like, eh, ta, and then walked out, would they be like, bit of a fucking prick, isn't he?

• 8:54Andy Greenwald?

  I think they're saying that all the time regardless of what I do.

• 8:57Chris Ryan?

  They're saying it either, even if we're like, hey, thank you so much, man.

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  But, by the way, this happened on the tube yesterday or the day before, packed tube train coming back from work and there was a couple, clearly there were, I think, I was on one of the lines that goes to the airport and it might have been the Lizzie line or whatever. And so there was this couple and they had suitcases and came to the stop and they were stressed and they were like, excuse us, excuse us, so sorry, so sorry. And they're leaving the train car and the woman of the couple left her suitcase.

• 9:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, no.

• 9:25Andy Greenwald?

  And I said, and I said, sir, sir, you're, and this is how fast I was, dude. I said, your case. I didn't say your bag, because that's not what it is. I said, your case. And he looked at me for a second and the look on his face was, why are you bloody talking to me right now?

• 9:39Chris Ryan?

  And then, did you say to him, sir, see it, say it, sort it, come on?

• 9:44Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't say it. I lived it. He then saw it and he was like, oh dear God, thank you, thank you so much. And he carried the bag off. He wasn't actually the guy I just, he wasn't Stephen Fry. But regardless, he took the bag and then I was just like, this is an incredible thing. Like I saved their entire trip or foiled their terrorist plot.

• 10:03Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 10:04Andy Greenwald?

  Either way.

• 10:04Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 10:06Andy Greenwald?

  I won. And I don't know if I did that because I'm a pushy American. That in, in history will just have to judge me.

• 10:13Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna find out. If you enjoyed this, uh, this cross Atlantic banter, uh, get ready because we're gonna both be in England next week and also this is thematically appropriate for today's episode where we're talking about the finale of Slow Horses, season five, as well as the first two episodes of Down Cemetery Road, which is the new show on Apple TV, uh, that is adapted from a Mick Heron novel, uh, not the Heron verse.

• 10:38Andy Greenwald?

  The Heron verse.

• 10:39Chris Ryan?

  And stars Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson. And I was quite charmed by, uh, I can't wait to talk about that. We also have the penultimate episode of this season and perhaps the only season, I don't know, of the Lowdown. But Andy, first I wanted to just, uh, circle back, take the wagon back a few miles and talk a little bit more about Taylor Sheridan.

• 10:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so more details, so more reporting has emerged since our breathless coverage.

• 11:02Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I have been greatly amused by the reporting about this to come out after Matt's initial, after Matt Bellany's initial reporting because I think that you can detect a fair amount of, hey, we need to get ahead of this part of this or this part of this, both coming from the Sheridan camp and from the Paramount camp. So you've, depending on what you're reading, you can almost feel the thumb being pressed down on the nerve center of the piece of like, hey, make sure you know that he spent a lot of money, or make sure you know that he didn't like that they cast Nicole Kidman in this other show, et cetera, et cetera. My favorite detail by far to come out of all of this is that Sheridan's deal with university is reportedly worth $1 billion.

• 11:47Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, he watched Austin Powers recently, I think.

• 11:51Chris Ryan?

  So his agent is Dr. Evil. He was like, one billion. It is apparently contingent on him making 20 television shows.

• 12:01Andy Greenwald?

  Seems doable.

• 12:02Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to know, how many Taylor Sheridan shows do you think we could come up with right now?

• 12:08Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my God. I mean, I already said one. I said bowl of pepperoni five minutes ago. That's one down. You've got 19 to go.

• 12:17Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, because like, it's harder than it looks. Because every time he announces or a rumor comes out about a show that he's doing, I'm like, I can't believe, I can't believe he's doing this. This is amazing. But also, like, I, for some reason, wouldn't have had the bravery or the courage or the creative foresight to do this. Did you know that there was a show that he had been working on at Paramount called The Correspondent, which was about a correspondent who is going to be

• 12:45Andy Greenwald?

  Hell, yeah.

• 12:45Chris Ryan?

  covering the war in Afghanistan?

• 12:49Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, that sounds good. What else you got?

• 12:52Chris Ryan?

  I think that you and I would best, our time would best be served trying to figure out different iterations of his Dutton family by the year series or series. So obviously he did 1883, which is I think a lot of people still consider his best work. He did 1923, which had a kind of morbid, like sadistic kind of vibe to it in my mind. But we haven't gotten anything else.

• 13:21Andy Greenwald?

  But if you told me right now that one of his projects that was like, you know, had a blinking green light, as they say, was just called 89. And it's Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty sitting on a porch. Like, I would believe that. You know what I mean? Like, that is the method, right? It's just like, pick an area, as we say in the industry, a story area, and then throw money at famous people to enact it.

• 13:49Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. Like, you have to, like, we have to come up with like a Taylor Sheridan series generator, as like an app, kind of, because you could basically say, like, take this character who has done this very specialized thing and is at like, a kind of middle upper tier of management of wherever they are. So this is always all done in a character in Linus or Billy Bob Thornton in Landman. And then dump like a ton of family stuff on them as well as some extraordinary kind of, you know.

• 14:23Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, right. So basically, like, the comptroller, right? And it's just like Dallas, Texas, and it's Shirley Theron.

• 14:33Chris Ryan?

  I thought you were gonna talk, it's gonna be like Brad Lander's show or something. Who's the comptroller of New York City?

• 14:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I would watch that show. I'm trying to help you help Taylor. So he takes middle management job. You're not the mayor. You're also not on the city council and you control the books. So you're kind of the landman of the urban land.

• 14:53Chris Ryan?

  Coming from Taylor Sheridan, Krasner, the story of a DA trying to disassemble the carceral system.

• 15:01Andy Greenwald?

  Let me be clear. That is not a show that Taylor Sheridan would make. He would make a show about who's the guy that just our DA in LA, Hockman.

• 15:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Andy Greenwald?

  Hockman. Like, one DA hired, elected to undo what the liberal DA did in the two years of, right?

• 15:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Chris Ryan?

  ACAB. All cops aren't bastards.

• 15:26Andy Greenwald?

  All cops are bodacious. This police show set in Hawaii in the 1980s.

• 15:31Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no.

• 15:32Andy Greenwald?

  It's fine. It's, yeah, no, yes, yes, yes.

• 15:37Andy Greenwald?

  It's, look, I, it's a smart, if it's a billion dollars, but it's, you know, it's contingent. It is, you know, it's like the, the deal Embiid should have signed, right? Where it's like you get 200 million dollars.

• 15:49Chris Ryan?

  We're all feeling good about each other right now.

• 15:51Andy Greenwald?

  I'm feeling so good. He's such a cheerleader. I'm just saying that like, it should have been maybe like tied to some achievable's. And if, if he can deliver what he has delivered in the past, then like the amount of, the amount of money that he has made for Paramount is outrageous. It kind of makes sense. I also think, and we said a little bit about this the other day, that like, you don't throw these deals to people who are good at making one show. You throw these deals to people who are good at making many shows that are clearly one show. You know, like, we all know if a show is Shonda Rhimes. We know when a show is Ryan Murphy. Like, there are things that are instantly recognizable, or a vibe that you can slip, slip on like a glove, and that is Taylor Sheridan.

• 16:36Andy Greenwald?

  The details that I feel like we didn't hit on, in addition to the potential price tag. One was the, the sense, and this is, as you said, clearly coming from the Ellison camp, that it seemed like, because he doesn't take notes from anyone, and because there was a change of regime, that whoever, whoever had been in possession of the rubber stamps had perhaps left the company.

• 16:57Chris Ryan?

  Chris McCarthy was, was one of those people, yes, right.

• 17:00Andy Greenwald?

  The, and that the other thing with the Nicole Kidman piece was that maybe the land, not the landman, sorry, the lioness, the late renewal was kind of like a, here, look, let's fix this for you, kind of renewal, which I feel like you should take personally. Because

• 17:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Andy Greenwald?

  lionesses don't need your charity. The last and biggest thing that I don't know if we articulated clearly on Monday, though, was

• 17:25Andy Greenwald?

  Offering Taylor Sheridan a billion dollars and remaking the streaming landscape for a product that will not arrive for another three, four years is a remarkable show of commitment to the Peacock streaming service.

• 17:41Chris Ryan?

  I agree. But also so is buying NBA rights.

• 17:44Andy Greenwald?

  You're right. Like, they were pot committed, but that they just doubled the size of the pot. Like, it is just an outrageous outlay. But, you know, considering that we constantly made comments over the last year about, like, there being inevitable consolidation, that some of these streamers aren't going to continue to exist. This is a pretty radical line in the sand, that there will be, at least this one.

• 18:04Chris Ryan?

  I do wonder whether or not we'll see anything, like, even close to what HBO did with True Detective, where they had a bake-off to see if anybody has a take on what was Nick Pizzolato's series. And if that will happen with any of the Taylor Sheridan universe with saying, hey...

• 18:25Andy Greenwald?

  Which is the one you would throw your hat in the ring for?

• 18:28Chris Ryan?

  Well, here's the thing, is you basically have this series of Dutton family stories told over the course of generations, year by year, or decade by decade. You've got the poet laureates of the 1980s in the building already. Let the Duffer brothers make 1989.

• 18:49Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa.

• 18:50Chris Ryan?

  You know, what was going on with the Duttons in the John Hughes era?

• 18:55Andy Greenwald?

  That's so good. That's really good.

• 18:59Chris Ryan?

  It's just a bunch of people sitting around talking about how good Reagan is.

• 19:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's just a bunch of people very satisfied.

• 19:06Chris Ryan?

  They're just like, this guy's awesome.

• 19:08Andy Greenwald?

  This is awesome. All the hippies are gone.

• 19:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Andy Greenwald?

  This is...

• 19:13Chris Ryan?

  We did it.

• 19:14Andy Greenwald?

  That would be...

• 19:15Chris Ryan?

  But it would be kind of funny if they just started letting people be like, okay, what do you think of, what do you have for, like, a Yellowstone spinoff? I don't know if they're allowed to, because obviously Sheridan and 101 probably had a pretty unique deal. I don't imagine that they can continue. I mean, do you think that that stuff is Paramount's IP?

• 19:32Andy Greenwald?

  I think that would be really complicated. I don't necessarily think that's the case, no.

• 19:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 19:38Andy Greenwald?

  Like, True Detective was Warner Brothers' production for HBO. It's in-house, right? They bought it.

• 19:45Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 19:46Andy Greenwald?

  And they made it, I believe. Unless I'm forgetting some detail, it was anonymous, maybe anonymous content is involved. But that's the case. But... I don't, yeah, I don't have an answer. There clearly are answers out there that we can find, but I think that his role in creating-

• 20:00Chris Ryan?

  Well, David Ellison has the chance to do the funniest possible thing by like, like, I don't know, having Rachel Senate be the next lioness? I don't know.

• 20:11Andy Greenwald?

  Or, or just rebranding the universe as like Hillstone and it's just about like a nationwide chain of incredibly consistent good restaurants.

• 20:18Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 20:21Andy Greenwald?

  With Kevin Costner back.

• 20:22Chris Ryan?

  All right, so, uh, we have a couple of shows here to talk about. We can talk about the new one, the finale that we got, or the lowdown. Um, I'm gonna leave it up to you.

• 20:34Andy Greenwald?

  Why don't we do Horses Cemetery Lowdown?

• 20:36Chris Ryan?

  Did you find, because you were sort of raised a few flags, uh, you threw a few flags on the last episode of, of the penultimate episode of Slow Horses. Did you find this to be a satisfying conclusion?

• 20:47Andy Greenwald?

  I thought it was an enjoyable conclusion to an enjoyable season of television that did not necessarily do anything for my investment in the series. It has kept me at arm's length for this entire season, and that didn't really change, um, up until the very last frame of the season, which I thought was both, um, was clever and, um, hinted at both a past and a potential future for the show.

• 21:20Chris Ryan?

  So spoilers for the finale of Slow Horses, but you're referring to the shot of, of Jackson Lamb's burned feet, correct?

• 21:27Andy Greenwald?

  It's just, I mean, first of all, usually like, you know, you have to, you have to pay more to get celebrity feet like that. And, uh, what a, what a relief, what a release. Um, yeah, that, so it can, we, we talked about this the other day, but, uh, or when it came up, like, the moment, the hinge point for the season for me, and honestly, my relationship to the show, not as someone who's gonna bail, but as someone who is just kind of enjoying it as a comedy versus something a little bit deeper than that, uh, was the long, um, gripping monologue that Gary Oldman delivers about, uh, an agent captured by the Stasi and the death of his love and his torture at the hands of, of the, the opposing forces.

• 22:07Chris Ryan?

  And Standish asks, "Oh, is that you?" And he was like, "Don't be daft, I made it up." Yeah.

• 22:12Andy Greenwald?

  And it was, it was a brilliant performance. It's a brilliant, it's a brilliant scene, a brilliant speech, and the end of the season confirmed for the audience, not for any of the other people in Slow House, that- Most likely, it was true. That was his life. That is his background. The show needed that, honestly. And it did also need just another glimpse of something that I think did exist a little bit in the first two seasons, which is why he does any of this, why this is important to him, what he feels he is owed, what he sacrificed to get this far. And, you know, through a certain lens, the actual human emotion that he feels for the castoffs, that he does think it's important to keep them for whatever reason.

• 22:54Chris Ryan?

  Or at least protect them.

• 22:55Andy Greenwald?

  Whether it's to keep them, yeah, exactly. Sometimes from themselves. So sometimes you gotta do that. Like, it's just, that just felt like good brand management, right? Like, it can't all be one-liners and Jaffa cakes. So I appreciated that. And, you know, the way that it, the way that the finale unfolded with the terror plotline going one way, the, you know, the, the actual last attack going another, and then the sting of the bee. Like, that was well, it's all so well done that it continues to feel churlish to complain. But it was, for me, the show, this season started as a seven and ended as a seven, which is higher than a lot of shows get.

• 23:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And I think coming off of the previous seven season, which was probably for Slow Horses' standards, a five, you know, to me.

• 23:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think it's fair.

• 23:41Chris Ryan?

  I thought that this was really gripping. I've said before, and I apologize to our listeners who maybe find this to be not consistent with their experience of the show, that I watched this pretty much as a binge on the screeners. And my experience with it was much more like a three-hour thriller than it was, or four or five-hour thriller, like, than it was a episodic, week-to-week, six-week television experience. And I think that greatly aided the feeling of propulsiveness and also the consistency of the tone. So I found it to be just a remarkably tight and fun experience. But I think a lot of it did have

• 24:23Chris Ryan?

  to do with the way I watched it. I don't want Apple to start putting these up over the weekend and just, like, let people, it's cool that people get to watch Slow Horses over the course of a month and a half. And I think next season I will effort to do that, that way. But I found it very addicting. I do think your point is really well taken, though, which is that...

• 24:45Chris Ryan?

  The very things that sometimes are rewarding about a show can become a little bit of a liability. And I think part of why I like Slow Horses over the last couple of seasons, or at least the first few seasons, was that it didn't get weighed down in its own trauma motivations for characters.

• 25:04Andy Greenwald?

  Totally.

• 25:05Chris Ryan?

  It was about people making mistakes. It was about people who perhaps were losers, you know, or self-perceived themselves to be losers. And it was about an institution that, for comic relief, but also for purpose reasons that we don't quite understand, need to keep this waystation of spies around, you know? And when you get to the fifth season of that, I think you just kind of wonder, like, why is Jackson being such a fucking prick all the time? You know, like, what's the deal? And when you start to see even little glimmers of, oh, well, obviously Catherine's boss

• 25:47Chris Ryan?

  and River's grandfather and Jackson all had some Germany stuff going on. And that's probably why Jackson's so mean to Catherine and was the meanest you could be to her boss.

• 26:01Chris Ryan?

  And why he has this strange relationship to River because of what River's grandfather may or may not have done to him in your imagination. I think it starts to suggest a deeper experience of this show that I would like for them to lean into.

• 26:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I would add one other thing, which is to your point about the things that are strengths can start to feel like overly familiar over time. One of the strengths of the show has always been, and I imagine will continue to be, the unsentimentality about the turnover. That said, I think Slow House is a bit...

• 26:37Andy Greenwald?

  stripped to the bone right now. It is lacking internal dynamics that have helped past seasons. So for example, Shirley was a very compelling character to me last season when she was basically paired in a two-hander with Marcus. Marcus is taken off the board last year, which is what happens with the show. And she didn't have any, she didn't have a dance partner this year. And she didn't really make much of an impression because of it. Roddy is an absurdity and a completely comic character who was, I think, probably overly showcased this year. And who is he playing off of other than everyone in terms of being exactly the same?

• 27:17Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 27:17Andy Greenwald?

  Similarly, what's, what's her name leaving for this season but potentially coming back?

• 27:21Chris Ryan?

  Louisa, yeah.

• 27:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, like the, I don't necessarily buy that she and River are like one true pairing.

• 27:28Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 27:28Andy Greenwald?

  But at least there was some frisson of something, of wanting, of neediness, of connection. And look, the, the benefit of the, of the evolving and fluid cast means that each season of Slow Horses theoretically has the right shape to fit into the plot that McHaren and now Will Smith and whoever's taking over from him want to use. But I think I'd like a little bit more. Second point I want to ask you, because I actually got some pushback on this from my English colleagues, which was that I did find, what's his name, Nick?

• 28:04Chris Ryan?

  Is this like your English colleagues, like the guy who sold you a brolly or the English colleagues?

• 28:09Andy Greenwald?

  No, my work colleagues.

• 28:10Chris Ryan?

  In your community of writers, yeah. Okay.

• 28:13Andy Greenwald?

  No, what's his name, the comedian from Ted Lasso who plays the mayor?

• 28:17Chris Ryan?

  Nick Mohammed.

• 28:18Andy Greenwald?

  Nick Mohammed. I was like, I just, that was a choice to cast a, a small, pleasant comedian as the mayor of London, and it immediately took me out of any plausibility of those scenes. They were like, have you been, you haven't been in London long enough to understand that this is how our politicians work here?

• 28:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Andy Greenwald?

  On a, on this, on a civic level.

• 28:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:38Andy Greenwald?

  That said, I think I need to have more of like, I need to go a little more native or have it explained to me again, because I just feel like if a city was roiled by a massive.

• 28:49Andy Greenwald?

  Mass casualty gun violence attack and then there was like a healing moment that the mayor came to, there might be a television camera there or some press or more than two security guards who are very bad at their job.

• 28:59Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 28:59Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? Like, it's just, the thing about the season is just like, you, you, you've laid out a marker with Abbott's field and then you just try to keep pushing that button even though the rest of the season fights the credulity of that.

• 29:11Chris Ryan?

  For, for what it's worth, the season five, uh, usage of the, uh, the terror plot being rooted in English colonialism and, uh, the intelligence services kind of cutthroat abandonment of people in Libya.

• 29:31Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, sure.

• 29:32Chris Ryan?

  And then I, I enjoyed the usage of, of, uh, Claude, of the wheel in character. I thought like, kind of playing on his, um, his self, self belief was, was a good piece of, of writing and I really enjoyed, oh, sorry, I forgot who plays Wheelin again? James Salas.

• 29:51Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, James Salas, yeah.

• 29:53Chris Ryan?

  I thought he was, he was quite good this season. This, uh, next season of Slow Horses, as Andy informed me after his incredible piece of Googling, is based on not just one, but two McCarran novels. So it's Joe Country and Slough House. Um, and it features our boy, Kyle Soler, Cyril from Andor.

• 30:13Andy Greenwald?

  That's so sick.

• 30:14Chris Ryan?

  Some role to be determined. It looked good. It looks great. I, I still, I have season tickets, man. Um, I'm so happy that this show is seemingly going to last for 10 seasons and 60 episodes of television. Um, and I will be curious to see going forward, whether they just reset the clock and say, here's another zany adventure of these people who don't really want to be in Slough House, but can't, can't leave. Or if they continue to pull at the threads that were shown in the last frame of season five, Rivers seemingly like commitment to leaving, et cetera, et cetera.

• 30:54Andy Greenwald?

  One thing that I liked about the trailer, other than the fact that, god damn it, there's a trailer for the next season. We used to make things in this country and now they do it all over here, was the fact that from what I could gather from the trailer, having not read the books, the plot of season six is about action and plot related to Slough House, not Slough House getting incredibly lucky and solving all the problems-

• 31:17Chris Ryan?

  Internationally espionage, yeah.

• 31:19Andy Greenwald?

  That MI5 can't do for itself.

• 31:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:21Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? Like, it centers, in the language and the parlance of the day, Slough House in a way that I think probably will be helpful for the story because you can't, at least maybe not until season seven, you can't do another story where it's just like, "The fuckups figured it out before you did, again, dummies."

• 31:37Chris Ryan?

  Or they've inserted themselves into an international incident rather than one of their own has been taken or, you know, killed or whatever.

• 31:46Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know the other thing that I love about these trailers is, they show the trailer and I'm like, "Oh, everyone has a different haircut."

• 31:52Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 31:53Andy Greenwald?

  As if it takes longer than two weeks to change your hair, but there's something about it that makes-

• 31:59Chris Ryan?

  Shirley's new hair, I was just like, "Okay, Shirley."

• 32:02Andy Greenwald?

  I've come to equate hair changes with massive delays in production, that like, they had to just work with what the actor had done in the three years that they last filmed, as opposed to them just walking into wardrobe on day one and then being like, "Yeah, how about shorter?" And then going, "Right, yeah." So, it's very exciting, very exciting.

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• 34:33Chris Ryan?

  Since we're on the topic of Mick Herron, let's talk about Down Cemetery Road. The first two episodes of this show went out today, I think.

• 34:41Andy Greenwald?

  Today.

• 34:42Chris Ryan?

  So we won't get

• 34:43Andy Greenwald?

  Well, we're recording Wednesday.

• 34:44Chris Ryan?

  heavily into spoilers. I think we can just, I think you and I agree. I recommend the show. Now, I was fascinated to see the little sprinklings of Mick Herron specifically. And this is adapted by Moana Banks, who worked on, who's worked on Slow Horses as a writer on the Slow Horses staff.

• 35:05Andy Greenwald?

  Who, who is also, by the way, a quite well-known comedian and the voice of Mummy Pig on Peppa Pig. Just, just for the Daddingtons.

• 35:13Chris Ryan?

  Damn, is she kicking up off that, you think?

• 35:16Andy Greenwald?

  I want to say yes.

• 35:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Andy Greenwald?

  But, you know, you never know with voice acting gigs. You never know what contract you sign.

• 35:23Chris Ryan?

  Cause is Peppa Pig one of those things that has like 53 seasons?

• 35:27Andy Greenwald?

  Peppa Pig is extremely enduring. Peppa just had a new sibling. Peppa's still cooking.

• 35:31Chris Ryan?

  Oh, man. Way to go, Peps. So Marwena Banks wrote, and I believe show ran the show and Natalie Bailey directed the first two episodes. It's based on the Zoe Bohm series from The Slow Horses, author McCarron.

• 35:45Chris Ryan?

  This is a private detective working in Oxford. It's played by Emma Thompson with a spiky silver haircut. This pilot episode, or the first episode, and to some extent, the second episode, really grabbed me because almost six minutes in, you are deep within a conspiracy involving the Ministry of Defense, involving private detectives, involving the Oxford sort of community of hospitals and police departments. A strange explosion happens at night, interrupting a dinner party being hosted by a woman named Sarah Trafford, who's played by Ruth Wilson. She's like an art restorer at a local museum. And she's married to a finance guy.

• 36:26Chris Ryan?

  They're hosting a dinner for his work that is attended by a couple of like, kind of hippies that they know from around Oxford. And it's not going very well. And sort of at the peak of the dinner falling apart with arguments about politics and woke cancel culture, there's an explosion that shatters their window and blows the lasagna everywhere. And it's a big moment and they run down to the explosion site.

• 36:51Andy Greenwald?

  To be fair, the lasagna was already pretty blown out.

• 36:53Chris Ryan?

  It seemed like it was singed. Yeah. But with that, those British produce, you know, and maybe it's persevering through that.

• 37:02Chris Ryan?

  And they run down to this explosion site and there unspools a mystery where Sarah basically gets it in her head that a girl who's been injured in the explosion is a girl that she had a previous attachment to after seeing her on the road.

• 37:18Andy Greenwald?

  A child, yeah.

• 37:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, a child, a little girl named Dinah. It kind of, the more you talk about this show or the more you try to explain the plot, probably the less sense it makes and the more far flung it feels. I just thought that this was expertly done. And also.

• 37:34Andy Greenwald?

  Totally agree.

• 37:35Chris Ryan?

  Entertainingly written with just enough of the, I guess.

• 37:40Chris Ryan?

  Mick Herron, also by way of Ian Nucci, kind of spiky dialogue that elevated it beyond just a pulpy page turner. What did you think of the first couple of episodes?

• 37:52Andy Greenwald?

  I loved the show. I was totally charmed by it. And I was, I loved it for two reasons. One is just the sheer professionalism of it. Like, there are moments in the first 15 minutes of the show is a masterclass on how to make producible screenplays in 2025. It starts with our main character at her job, telling us about her, telling us about what she notices and what she doesn't, setting the scene, and then she bikes home and we suddenly we realize we're filming this in Oxford, which is incredibly beautiful. And at least to my knowledge, I mean, it's probably different over here, but like-

• 38:26Chris Ryan?

  And also some of the sound stages where they shot Criminal Record. I mean, there's like some of the interiors-

• 38:30Andy Greenwald?

  But I'm saying, but like, but when you see Oxford on screen-

• 38:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 38:34Andy Greenwald?

  -as an American, it's either like a Harry Potter movie, or it's a period piece. It's rarely like, oh, this is actually a college town and that has these incredible structures in it. And she's biking home and she's basically the living embodiment of the toast catalog, deep cut for English people who like clothes. And, you know, there's a song, a pop song playing, and she has this interaction with a child that is clearly significant. And then she has a fraught conversation with her husband. And it is incredibly formulaic and it is incredibly successful-

• 39:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:02Andy Greenwald?

  -in introducing us to the world, this main character, and then literally blowing it all up. So it is the best case scenario of like, let's get exceptional, high level actors, let's get a beautiful location, and let's really, really give people a chance to get involved before we start spinning the wheels of a larger mystery. So I really liked all that. But beyond that, what I loved is, and this is why I kind of wanted to talk about this second to Slow Horses, is that it almost feels like, now, I've heard, I have not read these books, and I've read some light commentary about them that is, that even suggests that so far this show is more successful than the books, that a few changes have been made. I can't speak to that. But it does feel to me almost like a direct response

• 39:46Andy Greenwald?

  to, not necessarily my individual criticism of Slow Horses, but-

• 39:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:51Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think so. No, no, I mean, the makers of the show.

• 39:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Andy Greenwald?

  Because what this show has is the wit and the verve and the professionalism of Slow Horses, and Mick Herron is just like a master level plotter. But it does have a really strong heartbeat of emotion and humanity centered in the performances of Ruth Wilson as Sarah and then Emma Thompson as Zoe, who because of who she is and how we meet her, is Jackson Lamb-ish.

• 40:20Chris Ryan?

  Ish.

• 40:21Andy Greenwald?

  But, but has a very, very.

• 40:24Chris Ryan?

  He has a type, yeah.

• 40:25Andy Greenwald?

  But she has a very specific, I don't want to say reason, because I've only spent two hours with her, but I, I understand why she is the way she is in a more active emotional way that I'm really, really, really, really enjoying. And I, I just think beyond that, like the plot and the levels of plot are pretty ingenious. It's a really exciting way to tell a smallish town mystery story, but one that has tendrils that go quite literally all the way to the top.

• 40:52Chris Ryan?

  There's sort of two shows happening within this series. There is the Oxford mystery with, with Sarah and Zoe. Then there is this sort of, the Thick of It-esque Ministry of Defense show with Darren Boyd, who, is he six foot nine? I don't know, but his.

• 41:10Andy Greenwald?

  So for what it's worth, when you Google in the UK, it told me that he is 1.93 meters. And I'm like, you could have just printed this in fucking Magyar. I have no idea what that means. But then I Googled, what is 1.93 meters? And he's six foot three, which suggests that, that Adil Akbar, who's a great actor who plays Hamza.

• 41:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Andy Greenwald?

  He might in fact be quite small, but either way, it is a brilliant pairing between the two of them that has a lot of power dynamics just in the visual imagery.

• 41:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes, there's just like bar after bar of, of great dialogue between the two of those guys. The other thing I was going to mention to you, and I saw the Vulture recaptor, recaper pointed this out in some way, but I, I fully agree and it occurred to me.

• 41:54Chris Ryan?

  The sort of inciting event of the explosion happens, I don't know, six minutes into the show, seven minutes into the show. I was so nervous that it was gonna be like two weeks earlier.

• 42:04Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, there was gonna do that? Yes, no, it didn't do it.

• 42:08Chris Ryan?

  At various points over the course of the episode, we were gonna find out that Sarah had, um, we were gonna get like a full flashback of Sarah's childhood because there's a really lovely exchange where somebody is like, why do you care about this girl so much? Is it that she reminds me of, reminds you of your child? And you're like, okay, did she?

• 42:29Andy Greenwald?

  Or the child you want to have, yeah.

• 42:30Chris Ryan?

  Or did you lose a child? Or can you not have children? Like, and she's just like, no, it kind of reminds me of who I was. And I was like, great line, says a lot about a character without actually saying anything. And we keep it moving. And this show just has a really nice rhythm to it that, and it's not tripping up by being like, well, we better show a black and white flashback of her childhood and her doing a similar activity as this girl so that we know why she's obsessed. She's obsessed. Now, in the book, apparently she's, she gets obsessed with this because she's bored. She doesn't really have a lot going on in her life. She doesn't have this keen eye for detail that I think will come in very helpfully throughout this mystery.

• 43:12Chris Ryan?

  But I just really thought like, it was, it was good for the things it wasn't doing. I appreciated the things it didn't do.

• 43:19Andy Greenwald?

  That's a great point.

• 43:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Andy Greenwald?

  I will also say, I think you were right to frame this conversation as a non-spoiler. But I do wanna shout out the great British actor, Adam Godley, who plays Zoe's husband, who is kind of an extremely mild-mannered, low-stakes, jazz-loving, private eye.

• 43:40Chris Ryan?

  You may remember him as getting seltzer in his eye in Succession on election night.

• 43:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, or you may remember, you may have seen him in the Lehman trilogy, who Tony nominated. You may have seen him in Breaking Bad, where he is-

• 43:51Chris Ryan?

  I think more people probably saw him in Succession than Lehman trilogy.

• 43:54Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I, but then I said Breaking Bad. Did you see the Lehman trilogy? No, I want to do that.

• 43:59Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 44:00Andy Greenwald?

  Does that count? Do I get theater, do I get theater credit for that? I'm just saying that like

• 44:05Chris Ryan?

  I'm like, damn, Andy saw the Lehman trilogy. Yeah. I mean, it's not beyond.

• 44:09Andy Greenwald?

  Brother, I'm a podcaster. Say things with confidence. That's literally the only job requirement. Be a man in his 40s who's confident about his opinions. The checks rolling. It's fucking great.

• 44:23Andy Greenwald?

  He, yeah, he was Breaking Bad. He's Walter White's like business partner.

• 44:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Andy Greenwald?

  Initially, and he was also really good in The Great. Anyway, he's always good. And when he shows up, it's just a reminder, kind of like just A, the deep, deep bench.

• 44:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:38Andy Greenwald?

  Of great actors here in the UK. But also like, it's just choosing to fill every corner of the canvas. Shout out Sarah Trafford, art conservationist, with, with color. And with specific decision making. Also, you know, I'm just going to say, if there was ever, I don't know if Apple's listening or if McCarran's listening, like, The Adventures of a Mild-Mannered, Jazz-Loving, Openly Jewish Private Investigator in Oxford, like, that's a spinoff that I'd watch.

• 45:10Andy Greenwald?

  Again, I might have to fit it in between. It's true, fucking true. Like, they, there's a menorah on his shelf. I'm just saying.

• 45:19Chris Ryan?

  You fucking crack me up, man.

• 45:21Andy Greenwald?

  I might not, I might not have time with all my viewings of The Lehman Trilogy and West End, you know? But, but if, if you were to greenlight that show, I would, I would happily watch it.

• 45:32Chris Ryan?

  Okay, that's, I mean, that's a glowing review of Down Cemetery Road. We'll revisit that. It's really good.

• 45:37Andy Greenwald?

  It's just, yeah.

• 45:38Chris Ryan?

  It's really good. I, it's actually a show, I'm having a marital argument. Because my wife saves a lot of shows to watch with her mother. And they, like, her mother-in-law, hi, Eileen, she sometimes listens.

• 45:54Chris Ryan?

  I love you. She burns through British mysteries at an absolutely amazing pace. And so whenever I have a British mystery that I'm like, oh, this is really good. We'd enjoy this, to my wife, she's like, great, I'll watch it with mom.

• 46:08Andy Greenwald?

  Don't you think, so the argument is ongoing? Or?

• 46:11Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's, I've lost. I will not be, I have to watch Don Cimber Terry run at my own time.

• 46:16Andy Greenwald?

  Like, it is kind of, you know, again, like, one of the nice things, I know people have different opinions about it, but like, one of the nice things about, from my perspective as an outsider about the UK, is that there's just like, some institutionalized, state-run things that are good, like, the NHS or whatever. Like, I feel like, it seems like Mick Herron television shows are providing a similar service for the great British actors of our time as they age out of Star Trek villain roles or whatever the fuck they get offered in movies.

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:45Andy Greenwald?

  Because Emma Thompson, like, you and I are old enough to remember when Emma Thompson, like, flashed across our cinema screens like a comet in the late 80s, early 90s. And people were like, this is the greatest actor alive. Like, that is how she was considered.

• 46:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I was rewatching the Cat's Brandon, Henry V, the other day. Oh, man. I was like, god damn. Fantastic. I mean, you know, Henry V, pretty good.

• 47:07Andy Greenwald?

  Pretty good. I remember seeing that at the Ritz.

• 47:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:10Andy Greenwald?

  And she, so now she has a part where she can just be like, fuck it, let's go. I'm gonna horse bath myself in this private investigator's office.

• 47:18Chris Ryan?

  Don't wash your face with this towel. That was really good.

• 47:20Andy Greenwald?

  Great shit.

• 47:21Chris Ryan?

  We recommend this. Okay, do you want to hit low-down penultimate episode? The reason why I had said to Andy before we got on was like, well, we could combine this with the finale, is that as penultimate episodes go,

• 47:36Chris Ryan?

  this was not exactly like, The Wire third season one, you know, like-

• 47:41Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, that's fair.

• 47:42Chris Ryan?

  Which, I am very interested in Sterling Hardjo's execution of the mystery side of this, of the action side of this, because those are elements that even though reservation dogs have played in different genres, that he had even said to us, or to me, like, I, when I interviewed him and Ethan a couple of weeks ago, he was like, that was hard. This was much more difficult than, you know, like, I can write people hanging out all day. The, you know, learning the mystery, learning the rhythms of a mystery, learning like, how, when to turn, when to show- When to, you know, give audience privilege versus what, you know, what only the characters know. And so you go into this penultimate episode, which is called.

• 48:28Andy Greenwald?

  Tulsa Turnaround.

• 48:29Chris Ryan?

  Tulsa Turnaround, which also could have been a pretty cool name for the show. It's written by Walter Mosley, who wrote Devil in a Blue Dress and the Easy Rollins Mysteries, and is one of the great crime writers of our lifetime, me and Andy's. And so I had pretty high expectations because penultimate episodes can be, they can be the knockout punch and the finales can sometimes be the coda. And I felt like this was almost like the finale 1A. You know, it was like that next week will continue and to the extent that there is a cliffhanger in this lowdown episode that is obviously going to be picked up immediately from, I would, I would hope immediately in the finale.

• 49:08Chris Ryan?

  This one was a little shaggy for me. It felt like it was pushing a lot of players into an area of physical space so that a lot of the plot lines of the season could get resolved. Now, I still liked it. There are still several scenes in this that I thought were delightful or really compelling, including a fascinating or fantastically executed opening few minutes of the two speeches being given.

• 49:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Chris Ryan?

  But what did you make of the penultimate episode?

• 49:36Andy Greenwald?

  Here's what I'll say. Inside of me, there are two wolves. And by wolves, I mean.

• 49:40Chris Ryan?

  Openly Jewish and jazz-loving.

• 49:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Or two different flavors of pedantic TV critic recovering. One of them watches something like Down Cemetery Road and admires the precision, the professionalism, the efficacy of doing things by the book. We're gonna, you know, like I was describing the opening moments of that show. The other part of me loves a beautiful mess. And if, and that's the jazz-loving part, I guess. And if, if I'm, if I like the players and I've been enjoying my time at the club, like you could play anything and I'm going to enjoy it for what it is. I say that not because there was anything bad about this episode.

• 50:25Andy Greenwald?

  In fact, there were moments of real beauty, I thought, and real profundity about the nature of America and land and who owns what and relationship between races, relationship between white people and guilt and culpability and ego. And frankly, one of the most affecting. Uh, father-daughter scenes.

• 50:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it was really good.

• 50:49Andy Greenwald?

  It's a beautiful scene and it's really played incredibly by Ethan Hawke and Ryan Kira Armstrong, who plays Frances, where he says he's absent because he wants to be the kind of person worthy of his daughter's admiration and she just shakes her head and says, "I've always admired you" and walks away.

• 51:06Chris Ryan?

  But there's a great little exchange that they have where he's supposed to be at this PTA meeting that he shows up late for and his ex is there with her new fiance, I think, even though she had said that they had broken up and they're, they're, they're doing it and it almost feels like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence for him where he walks in, he realizes that he is actually going to be replaced to some extent.

• 51:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 51:28Chris Ryan?

  And all for the better. And as he's walking out and Frances confronts him, he says like, "I'm not gonna be the guy who takes you to like soccer practice or whatever or shows up for every single thing. I'm gonna basically be the kind of person that I'm parenting by showing you what good values are." And I think throughout this episode, you know, it's interesting, Lee espouses very good values and he talks about like, "I can't see an injustice take place without."

• 51:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 51:55Chris Ryan?

  Speaking of.

• 51:57Andy Greenwald?

  And he says this to two black men who live in America.

• 51:59Chris Ryan?

  He gets Graham Greene's character killed, you know, and.

• 52:02Andy Greenwald?

  And he storms into a church waving a handgun.

• 52:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:05Andy Greenwald?

  Um, the, the scene with Frances was also perhaps affecting to me as someone who is, um, working 6,000 miles away from his children for multiple weeks to be worthy of either admiration or to be able to pay for summer camp. But regardless of all that,

• 52:21Andy Greenwald?

  what I'm trying to articulate also about the mess was that I know nothing about production, post-production, anything about how the show got made or what the intentions were for this episode, but there are certain things that as a viewer, if not someone who's worked in the industry, you can point to when something hasn't necessarily, sometimes things can get better when they don't hit the initial target, but you can tell that something wasn't the initial target by certain benchmarks, one of which is a radically different runtime than the other episodes. And this one was about 10 minutes shorter than other episodes have been this season. One of them is an enormous amount of work. Clearly done in post where scenes are laid on top of each other or there's ADR.

• 53:01Andy Greenwald?

  Things are combined in ways that were unlikely to have been combined at the script stage. Now, there are filmmakers who that's how they make their movies. They find it later.

• 53:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:11Andy Greenwald?

  And Sterling is a filmmaker, but all of that is to say-

• 53:14Chris Ryan?

  So I think a good example of that for our listeners, if they're wondering what you're talking about would be when Tracy Letts' Frank character goes to meet with Graham Greene at Whispering Pines and Tracy's awesome in this. Like, I really like this idea of a guy who's just like at once evil, but also in too deep. And everybody's got a boss in this, in this show.

• 53:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 53:37Chris Ryan?

  He goes up to Graham Greene's door, knocks on it, says, can I come in? I think in the intervening moments and scenes, Ethan Hawke goes to like three different locations with Killer Mike. It does like three different things. And then we pick up the action as if Tracy Letts' Frank's just sat down with Graham Greene's character. And it's like a time, a time thing. And then Ethan Hawke and Keith David arrive almost in the nick of time to that conversation.

• 54:06Andy Greenwald?

  But also Keith David, Keith David Googles information about the church that then overlays the website over what he's looking at. And then he goes to a place and there's this very dreamy, like someone's being tarred and feathered. So it's complicated and there's a lot of stuff and, and it's always interesting to me. Maybe we'll get to talk to Sterling about it. Like, is this an example of an overstuffed script that ran too long? And so they combined things. Is it something they just found in the edit? Did they not get something that they had to write around? My point is, when you're all in on, on a show that has something profound to say and has an artistic way of saying it. I let, I, I let go of the wheel, man. Like, I, I, I just think this is a really, really compelling show. I think it's a really entertaining show.

• 54:51Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that what he's doing is very affecting in ways that continue to surprise me. Like, I didn't expect the episode that had the confrontation between Native activists and Kyle McLaughlin's.

• 55:05Andy Greenwald?

  Kind of well meaning, but weirdly, not weirdly, but extremely inappropriate gubernatorial candidate. I didn't expect that episode that had that kind of polemic to be the one that had the father daughter scene that knocked me on my ass. But that's what this show is. So it made me excited for the finale and it also made me incredibly pretty sad if the finale is the finale finale. We don't know. I just really hope it's not.

• 55:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I would love for this show to get to the point where I get tired of it's not tired. I get suspicious of it's the repetitiveness of the moves like we are with slow horses, maybe, or like you, like, you know, as you've pointed out, I would love to be four seasons into the lowdown and be like, that Lee, keep stepping in it. But this has been such a gift. And like even the moments that probably go by in a blink of eye and I or are just choices that they make details. The bar that Tracy lets meets Gene Triplehorn in is so authentically Tulsa. The, the like, the way I've only been to Tulsa once, but I know that vibe of bar

• 56:15Chris Ryan?

  where it's broad daylight outside and you would not know it inside the bar because they have sealed all light from this place so that drinkers can feel like it's nighttime anytime. And it's just like those little things that it does are really, really effective to me. We can wrap it up there, man. I'm excited for the finale next week.

• 56:36Andy Greenwald?

  How are you feeling about your flight? You have the stuff preloaded on your iPad? Like, what's your, what's your strategy?

• 56:42Chris Ryan?

  I have a horse tranquilizer preloaded. I will be a

• 56:45Andy Greenwald?

  Hell, yeah.

• 56:46Chris Ryan?

  Brother.

• 56:47Andy Greenwald?

  Good for you.

• 56:48Chris Ryan?

  I'm excited. I can't wait to see you. We're gonna have some shows next week. We might move the days around a little bit because we've got the lowdown finale that we want to cover. But we've also got a brand new show from Vince Gilligan coming on Apple next week. Apple, just a show a week. Don't mind us.

• 57:05Andy Greenwald?

  It's unbelievable. Who knows where they find the money, but they somehow

• 57:09Chris Ryan?

  Exactly. As I look at my iPhone to see what time it is.

• 57:13Andy Greenwald?

  Just like private investigator Zoe Baum, who does a lot of Googling on her MacBook.

• 57:16Chris Ryan?

  Did you notice that art restorer Sarah Trafford, big AirPod fan?

• 57:20Andy Greenwald?

  Big AirPod fan.

• 57:21Chris Ryan?

  But we have Pluribus coming next Friday and we have a great interview with Vince Gilligan that we're excited to share with folks about the first couple of episodes of Pluribus. So we got to figure out our days, but we'll be with you next week in some capacity. Andy, great to see you. Can't wait to see you in person.

• 57:44Speaker 08

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