I’m hooked on the TV series, “Slow Horses” based on novels by Mick Herron. They concern MI6 workers who have bungled assignments and been banished to the purgatory of Slough House where they can do less harm. 

It’s presided over by Jackson Lamb, their crude, rude, slovenly, but crafty leader played by the chameleon Gary Oldman. His resume includes roles in which he convincingly plays everyone from Sid Vicious to Lee Harvey Oswald, Dracula, Beethoven, Sirius Black, George Smiley, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman.

Part of the pleasure of watching “Slow Horses” is plots which pit spooks trying to redeem themselves, higher ups who treat them with contempt, and criminals who are dangerous but often even less than competent than the slow horses. 

The cast features Jack Lowden as long-suffering River Cartwright. His father and grandfather were both spies before him and he should have had a stellar career before him but made such an egregeous error when attempting to stop a terrorist bombing that it landed him in Slough House. Unlike many of his fellow pariahs he is earnestly trying to redeem himself which means that in almost every episode he takes a beating, is nearly killed, or tortured.

The “Slough House” books that Slow Horses is based on are readable, but the TV version is far more fun since its combination of violence and incompetence means it falls into the often irresistible category of crime comedy. 

There’s a long history of combining suspense with tongue and cheek dialogue and action. Many Hitchcock movie fell into the category. So did several film noir classics including Bogart, as Sam Spade. It is a sub-genre of mystery, detective, and espionage that fills the shelves of book stores. 

Elmore Leonard’s criminals are often hilariously incompetent. They are familiar from tv and film adaptation that include “Get Shorty, “Justified,” “Jackie Brown,” and “Out of Sight.” Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder is a skilled thief whose heists are often ruined by the unexpected as telegraphed by their titles “What’s the Worst That Could Happen? “Why Me?” “Don’t Ask,” and “Drowned Hopes.” Carl Hiaasan’s capers are set in Florida and co-star the state’s weirdness, and the eccentrics who populate it. They are the joke

Such books are echoes of the California Noir tradition which began with the hard boiled detectives and criminal plots gone awry of Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and more recent heirs including Harry Bosch and the corrupt cops of James Elroy. The combination of resourceful gumshoes and tough guys pursuing incompetent criminals, suspense, and black humor figures in such films and tv shows as “The Big Lebowski,”  “A Fish Called Wanda.” “Fargo,” “Devil in a Blue Dress,” “The Grifters,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Chinatown,” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” Obviously, people can’t get enough of criminals screwing up or cops failing to crack the case.” Suspense is exciting, mysteries that get solved are gratifying, but bungling cops and robbers are a hoot.