Apple TV+ has managed to release a new season of Slow Horses every single year, and one of the directors just revealed major insight into the show’s breakneck schedule. Slow Horses debuted on Apple’s streaming service in 2022 and has maintained an exquisite score on Rotten Tomatoes ever since, with its second and fourth seasons receiving a perfect RT score.

It’s become far more common nowadays for cable and streaming shows to have at least two-year gaps between seasons, but Slow Horses bucked that trend.

In an interview with ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley at New York Comic Con, director Saul Metzstein opened up about Slow Horse‘s filming schedule and what has led to the quick turnaround between seasons. Funnily enough, he claimed that the filmmakers are “quite slow” at making Slow Horses.

It takes around 110 days to shoot a single season of the spy thriller series, which, to Metzstein, is “quite leisurely.” Plus, he doesn’t spend all day filming, so he doesn’t feel rushed when on set.

Despite a unique filming setup, Slow Horses manages to be “efficient enough” to keep the machine that is a major TV production on schedule.

What helps even more is the fact that each season of Slow Horses is only six episodes, which is shorter than most seasons of today’s TV shows, though not by much. Metzstein feels that six is the perfect episode count for the type of story they’re telling.

We’re quite slow at making it. It’s a sort of odd thing. Each season is like 110 days of shooting. It’s quite leisurely; we do very short days. We just somehow are efficient enough that it just keeps going. But it never feels like a particular rush. It actually feels very nice, pleasant, slow. We also only make 6 episodes as well. Some of these programs make a lot more episodes, but I think 6 episodes is the right kind of length for the kind of program [we are] and the kind of stories we’re telling.

Slow Horses stars Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas, Saskia Reeves, Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung and Aimee-Ffion Edwards. Oldman plays a character named Jackson Lamb, who’s in charge of Slough House, which is where failed MI5 agents are sent to.

Slow Horses season 5 is currently streaming on Apple TV+, with the finale expected to be released on October 29.

Under normal circumstances, network TV typically airs one season of its shows every year, with episode counts that can reach up to 20-25 per season. However, many shows on cable and streaming tend to have higher budgets and need extra time to create intricate special effects.

Stranger Things has received many complaints over how long it’s taken Netflix to reach the final season of the sci-fi series. Once the series finale drops in December 2025, it will have taken almost 10 years to release five seasons.

The main Stranger Things cast members were young teens and pre-teens when the series started, but they’re all adults now. Millie Bobby Brown is now married, and she and her husband adopted a baby over the summer.

Wednesday, another Netflix series, had a three-year gap between its two seasons, as did Severance on Apple TV+.

Meanwhile, House of the Dragon premiered in 2022, with its second season not airing on HBO until 2024. There is expected to be a similar two-year absence leading into season 3.

At the peak of its popularity and critical acclaim, Game of Thrones was producing 10-episode seasons every single year, even when the special effects budget received a massive increase, which is partly why there’s frustration over the delays between seasons of spinoff House of the Dragon.

Years-long waits between seasons have been the norm, and fans have been forced to endure these gaps, no matter how loud they complain on social media.

As far as the Oldman-led spy thriller is concerned, fans have been gifted a rarity in the streaming era: a new season of Slow Horses every year. That is definitely cause for celebration in the current TV landscape.

Metzstein’s explanation of the crew’s efficiency proves that a breakneck filming schedule is possible, and other shows should start adopting a similar production timeline.

Slow Horses releases new episodes every Wednesday on Apple TV+.