The AppleTV+ spy series retains its humor but gives viewers its most tightly plotted effort yet.

Slow Horses Season 3 reiterates how the series differs from so many other TV shows. While critics frequently discuss film as a director’s medium, television tends to be more showrunner—and thus writer—driven. While Horses indeed derives many of its pleasures from the writers—the returning trio of Will Smith, Jonny Stockwood, and Mark Denton once again man the pens—each season’s unique tone owes to its single director.

James Hawes made the series’ debut season a workplace comedy where the occasional gun battle might break out. Season 2 darkened or ditched much of the comedy for a bleaker, higher action affair under the direction of Jeremy Lovering. In Slow Horses Season 3, Saul Metzstein doesn’t push the team back into the offices. If anything, Slough House appears even less than in Season 2. However, he does re-up some of the mismatched colleagues’ humor, particularly when it comes to the team’s most recent additions, gambling addict Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan) and drug addict Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards). He also further deepens the emotional stakes with a light touch, adding depth to ever-growing complications.

While this season never becomes overly complicated, it proves plenty complex. After opening on an escalating couple’s fight between two spy types—Alison Dunn (Katherine Waterston) and Sean Donovan (Sope Dirisu)—Slow Horses Season 3 drops us back to business as usual as poor River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) once again draws the short straw—file sorting—aided only by Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves). Before long, though, one of the Horses is kidnapped, and the rest must scramble to save their abducted member. Twists pile up fast and furious until, once again, the Horses find themselves facing down their supposed MI5 colleagues.

While Gary Oldman, as the gross but too clever to overlook Jackson Lamb, remains the series’ most compelling figure, Cartwright, Standish, and Louisa Gay (Rosalind Eleazar) take up significantly more of the foreground of this season. Additionally, MI5’s second in command, Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), and Slough House’s man-boy in the chair, Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), get more to do, if not necessarily gain more dimensionality in the case of Chung. Lowden and Thomas especially benefit from the shift in burden. Cartwright finally seems to be coming into his own, although the shade of his grandfather’s accomplishments still hounds him. Meanwhile, Thomas spends all season reminding us that Oldman isn’t the only acting master in this class, imbuing Taverner with a nearly flippant tartness that lets her sneak up on the audience and her enemies.

With Lamb’s ghosts and regrets dominating Season 2, moving him back proves a wise choice, especially by the season’s end. The only ones who don’t benefit from the change are Kirwan and Edwards, who end up mostly stranded on their own side quest. They get to have the most fun, certainly. Unfortunately, they feel so much on their own island that it becomes difficult to invest in their shenanigans. While everyone else is getting some emotional depth in with their quips, these two who have arguably the easiest paths to depth—after Gay—get nearly no shading.

This is the one place Slow Horses Season 3 slips up. By building its arguably most tightly plotted—and plot-driven—season, it loses some of ability to let its characters wander. Marcus and Shirley chasing their tails wouldn’t register as a downside in seasons 1 or 2, but with everything more tightly on rails here, the diversions feel less like fun larks and more like unnecessary digressions.

Additionally, it feels like the least complete season of the series. The plot absolutely wraps up, but there is an undeniable sense of “wait, but there has to be more, right?”. When a trailer for Season 4 immediately follows the season’s wrap, it makes perfect sense. The final episode feels far more like an ellipsis than an exclamation point or period.

Nonetheless, Slow Horses remains one of the jewels in AppleTV+’s increasingly heavy cap. It’s undoubtedly the best spy series on television, an ever more crowded category. 

Slow Horses Season 3 once again mixes fart jokes and spy craft beginning November 29 on AppleTV+.