I Saw This!! What I have been watching - 2025 edition (Part B)

(Part A here)

 I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our [retired?] feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me (usually Toast, but Kent this time) spending too much time in front of the TV and not writing about it. Bad Kent! Bad! But it's in part because Kent is tired and busy can't review everything.

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Slow Horses Season 5 - 6/6 episodes
created by Will Smith (no, not *that* one)
Season 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

I've written a fair bit about Slow Horses over the past few years, and although I have not went back and reread what I wrote, I imagine my statements about the show are pretty repetitive at this point. It's probably my favourite show on TV right now and each season is just as gorge-inducing as the last.

Of course Gary Oldman's performance as head of these MI-5 rejects at Slough House was, is and will remain the biggest draw of the show, in no small part to how Oldman balances being absolutely rude and disgusting with being exceptionally hyper-competent. You want to hate him but can't help but be impressed and entertained by him. You never want to be stuck in a room with that guy though.

This latest season to a very big step forward in balancing the time and attention the main cast of characters is given. For much of the first for seasons River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) has been central focus with Lamb and Kristen Scott Thomas' MI-5 head Diana Taverner being the backbone of the whole thing, but this season steps back from the three and spotlights the Diana's incompetent boss Claude Whelan (James Callas), a political appointee, as well as Slough House's resident intolerable egotist incel Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) and agent-with-an-addiction Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards).

The House is still reeling from the previous season's very personal attack which claimed the life of Shirley's partner Marcus, and Shirley's either going to fall off the wagon or kill someone, and she seems exceptionally paranoid. But Lamb knows they're in the paranoia business and when it looks like an Agent might have been attacked (such as when Ho was almost run over if not for Shirley's intervention) there's maybe more going on than it appears. That it happens just after a courtyard massacre also seems more than coincidental.

Ho, who improbably finds himself with an incredibly attractive girlfriend, winds up in deep, deep trouble when his blind desperation for female affection maybe compromises the entirety of MI-5. And Whelan faces pressure from a ultra-right wing mayoral candidate who has blackmailing dirt on him. 

These all seem like kind of disparate threads, but the way they are woven together pull tighter and tighter over its six episodes and it's deliciously intense and quite satisfying by the end of it as the Slow Horses board seems to get completely reset.

While the bad guys of the season are virtually paper thin, with only the hint of a meaningful journey presented around them, this winds up being one of the most rollicking and propulsive of the series. And as always I got to the end and just wanted more.

A series rewatch might be called for 2026 (or maybe time to dive into Mick Herron's novels?).

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Man on the Inside Season 2 - 8/8 episodes
created by Michael Schur
season 1

It seems a few months and a few cases have passed with Charles (Ted Danson) working for Julie's (Lilah Rich creek) detective agency. The notoriously stand-offish private investigator seems to have warmed a little bit to Charles' accompaniment, and though it's never ever uttered in the show, it just may be he's kind of the annoying father figure she never had.

But Charles has been kind of bored by the usual cases that pass through a P.I.'s office, so when the opportunity comes for Charles to go back undercover, he excitedly leaps for it. This time he needs to go inside a local, beloved community college as a guest professor (his former vocation) to help the administration suss out who is threatening them as they look to close a spurious deal with a billionaire graduate.

Almost immediately upon entering the campus, Charles meets-cute with Mona, a former pop-rock chanteuse who's now the music teacher at the College. Mona is flighty but also extremely forward and she takes as much of a shine to Charles as he does to her. Mary Steenburgen, to who Danson is married to in real life, plays Mona, and their chemistry is undeniable. It's super charming and even a quite hot, as far as septuagenarian romance goes. 

Where last season had the focus of Charles still coping with the loss of his wife and his retirement from teaching by meeting people of a similar age in a retirement home, and learning how to live and be vital again, this season circles around Charles' troubles with entering and navigating a new relationship, a new personality in his life. It's a little less meaty, but a lot more cute.

Meanwhile Julie's mom, Vanessa (Constance Marie) enters the picture, and we both learn more about why Julie is the no-nonsense woman she is, but also about the very challenging mother-daughter relationship they have. Also Jason Mantzoukas plays Vanessa's lover with that typical manic Mantzoukas energy to hilarious effect.

The cast at the college isn't quite as robust as the seniors home in season 1, although David Strathairn, Sam Huntington, Jill Talley, and Michaela Conlin all are good in their roles, it's super sweet to see that Charles has maintained contact with everyone at the retirement home and so Stephanie Beatrix, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sally Struthers and John Getz all make welcome returns. So too does Charles amusing family of dunderheaded grandsons and Mary Elizabeth Ellis as his daughter Emily and Eugene Cordero as her supportive husband Joel.

It's a comedy with a bit of a P.I./mystery twist, that ultimately becomes about family and found family. Like other Schur projects, it abounds with heart as much as humour and reminds us that constantly reminds us that even when we differ it's still possible to get along.

It's such a lovely and gentle show, teeming with big laughs and great performances. I hope we get more for years to come.

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Down Cemetery Road Season 1 - 8/8 episodes
created by Morwenna Banks

There have been a lot of good series that have come and gone starring actors I like quite a bit that I haven't watched a second of, so it would be disingenuous of me to tell you that I was immediately drawn to Down Cemetary Road based on the pairing of Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson. I mean, it did seem an alluring idea, but the fact that it was based on a Mick Herron novels, so it may carry some of that Slow Horses juice was all the kick I needed to make it a must watch.

The plot finds Wilson's character, art restorer Sarah Tucker, getting in over her head when she starts investigating an explosion that happened in her friend's neighborhood. A man and woman were killed and a young girl, a friend of her friend's child, was hospitalized. Sarah, for reasons she can hardly explain, is utterly invested in the well being of this suddenly orphaned girl, and she hires a private investigator to look into it. Joe Silverman (Adam Godley) looks into it, and for his efforts he is killed, but made to look like a suicide. His short-tempered, vintage punk-styled wife Zoe (Thompson) can't help how astute she is and she knows somethings up.

Each begins their own investigation that crosses each other's paths more than once, that leads them to instant danger and a government cover-up led by Hamza, a highly incompetent individual (Adeel Akhtar). We spend a fair bit of time inside the government operations, what Hamza is up to, what his superiors are up to and the episodes start to unfurl a bleak tale of weapons testing and the attempts to cover it up.

The show is at its best when Wilson and Thompson are together, which they aren't much for much of the season. The second half, once the background is all pretty much revealed, moves at a pretty cracking pace as the characters start to narrow down their objective to rescuing the little girl, and nothing else matters.

It's a show that stretches credulity at times but never fully breaks it, as these two women take on powerful agencies and face ruthless killers. But the journey is a satisfying one, and the connection between Sarah and Zoe, while not solid as steel, feels weirdly open ended. A quick peek and it seems Zoe Boehm is the center of Herron's novel series but it does look like Sarah is a part of her journey going forward.

Yes, more of Wilson and Thompson together, please.