From a Corner Office With Views to a Leftover Generic Couch, the Sets of ‘Slow Horses’ Create Their Own Conspiracies

After several seasons, countless national security-threatening plots, and two ineffectual predecessors, MI5 senior spymaster Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) is finally First Desk in “Slow Horses”. She promptly moved into the expansive, gleaming office overlooking Regent’s Park at the end of season five. “Taverner has reached that ultimate goal, and she's taking it with both hands wide open,” says the Apple TV series’ production designer Choi Ho Man, who took over from Tom Burton in season three. “She wants to mark her territory and say, ‘I've arrived.’”

First order of business: completely changing the interior décor of former First Desk Claude Whelan (James Callis), who moved on thanks to wily spook Jackson Lamb’s (Gary Oldman) machinations and general incompetence. Instead of tucking her large wood desk by Italian-made Laporta off to the right of the entrance, and behind a slatted wall, like Whelan, Taverner sits majestically in front of the floor-to-ceiling window to greet her subordinates and adversaries face-on. “She’s in a more powerful position when you walk into the room,” says Man, who points out that Taverner did literally climb to the top from her previous subterranean glass-enclosed cube overseeing the hub.

Instead of Whelan’s backdrop of a bookshelf filled with vintage books that are probably for show and family photos, the stunning view of the London skyline backs Taverner’s minimalist desk, featuring a lone laptop on a stand and stacks of elegant leather-bound journals for top-secret notekeeping. A wall of television screens shows the latest news and security footage at her eyeline to the left—whereas Whelan only had one screen. “Oh you’re First Desk?” says grieving, disgruntled MI5 agent River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), his voice dripping with sarcasm, as he sits across from Taverner. He tilts his head at the subtly opulent office, rolling his eyes slightly. “God. I never would have known.”

The dark contemporary couch and arm chairs by Zanotta, also rented from Classic Modern prop hire company, founded by set decorator Sara Wan, surround a sleek coffee table. Not exactly welcoming, but it’s definitely immaculate and intimidating. “We’ve seen her home environment, which is very controlled and very deliberately sparse in a way. I mean, it’s decorative, but it’s sparse with clean lines,” says Man. “We wanted to take that part of her character and translate it into her workspace.”

To her right, Taverner did keep the large-scale abstract City of London painting, which feels even more imposing than before—like the new First Desk. “All the action played out on the other side [of the office] before. You weren't really aware of it, but the way that [director of photography] Eben Bolter and [director] Adam Randall have [filmed] it, you really see it and catch that glint this time,” says Man. “It’s quite nice to arrive at that point where it's always been there, but actually now you're really seeing it in its full glory.”

Each season, Man and set decorator Kamlan Man organically evolve the office sets to support new thrilling mysteries and intrigue and the always combative dynamics, but reluctant alliance with Lamb’s team of ragtag, reject agents, at Slough House, who actually do end up saving the day.

But the already rundown and neglected Slough House still hasn't been fully repaired from season four, when a mercenary henchman shot up the offices. Exposed beams, random patches of plaster, and Tyvek line the entrance and office walls, which haven’t been repainted, while errant crates create a minefield of tripping hazards—in addition to impulsive spies, like Coe (Tom Brooke) mistaking a real estate agent for an intruder and pummeling his face with a keyboard.

“I'm able to develop those sets, not as characters, but as non-static spaces. So for me, that's just brilliant. I love that it's telling a more subliminal story about society and the way that governments and big corporations treat various people,” says Man. “You could be inhabiting spaces which your company can't quite afford to [keep up] and it ends up being not only neglected, but it gets partially destroyed on the basis of that.”

Jack wanders into a partially redone office space and slams a “dodgy door” shut, while Lamb finally takes the plastic lining off of his unexpectedly purple couch. Or, more likely, office administrator and de facto mother of the team Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) straightened up his usually filthy and messy office—the opposite extreme of Taverner’s.

Man imagines that the generic piece of furniture was an HQ cast-off to replace the one destroyed in the season four gunfire standoff. “From central storage, they ship out a 10-year-old purple sofa in plastic wrapping, and Lamb hates it so much he doesn't even take the plastic wrapping off,” says Man, who received her second Emmy nomination for season five. “It’s that long thread through the story, which is quite enjoyable. We don't plan it over a five-year period. We plan it as it goes, and it just turns into something. It’s just got a natural evolution to it.”

Endearingly obnoxious computer specialist Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) adopts a new persona each season, like a purple-ponytailed footballer or a fitness bro, who wedged a weight machine into the tech room. “The interesting thing about Roddy Ho is he's always trying to reinvent himself,” says Man. 

After heartbreak last season, Roddy embraces his enlightened side as a zen Crypto bro (or “Wolf of Womble,” as Lamb calls him). He’s decorated his office walls with a delightful Easter egg hunt of inspirational, but borderline inappropriate imagery, including a muscular yogi mid-Tree Pose during sunset and a poster of a “Baywatch”-esque bathing suit-clad woman surrounded by motivational words: “Live light, be the light, spread the light.”

When the team—under threat from multiple assassins and with no support from First Desk or HQ—needs a place to lie low, Lamb cheekily directs them to a stunning Scandinavian-style coastal house, which turns out to be Taverner’s vacation home.

Man and her team heavily researched and scouted for “a very architecturally prominent beachside” house in what felt like a remote location. “It would be isolated,” says Man. “Nobody should know that she's there, so that was one of the governing factors. It needed proximity to the water, and then, because they’re in there for quite a long time, it needed enough real estate to carry out all the interaction between the inside and the outside.”

When Standish, her MI5 admin colleague/frenemy Moira (Joanna Scanlan), traumatized agent Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), and ex-spy Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar) arrive, they immediately check to make sure the sprawling house is clear—i.e., suss out which luxurious room they want to claim and find the wine cellar. They look like miniatures in a mid-century modern dollhouse as wide shots show each one turning on a light in different rooms with large square windows. “We want to be able to go outside and see in, so the clean lines lent itself to that,” says Man. 

Taverner decorated her holiday home in the same elegantly understated style as her office and London townhouse, with minimalist artwork and a plush, neutral couch for ex-dog Flyte (Ruth Bradley) to day-drink wine on. The Slough House team and later-arriving guests bicker and banter like the motley crew of a found family that they are around the long dining table, surrounded by contemporary rounded mid-back cane chairs—probably the only guests ever seated there.

“We know that work is her life and her only kind of solace and companion, and we don't see much more beyond that,” says Man. “We just felt that an interior like this would reflect that pared-back and very private kind of feeling.”

So how does Man imagine Taverner’s taste in interior décor? Fittingly for the show, the answer remains a mystery. “That's the million-dollar question, isn't it?” says Man. “It's a front. You never get to the real her. It's always somewhere buried between layers and layers of this persona which she's had to create in order to protect herself.”