“Strange Games” starts far from the stale corridors of Slough House. A betrayed romance in Istanbul becomes a dangerous London problem, while Catherine Standish’s absence brings the office’s usual bickering to a halt. The premiere gives the quietest member of Lamb’s team the most urgent story: people underestimate her at their peril, but understanding a threat does not always mean escaping it.
- Released
- 29 November 2023
- Runtime
- 44 minutes
- Source novel
- Real Tigers
- Director
- Saul Metzstein
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Watch and read
Open the official programme page or explore the source novel.
Detailed plot
Reveal episode spoilers
In Istanbul, Sean Donovan searches the belongings of Alison Dunn, the woman with whom he has been having a relationship. Alison catches him and learns that he is looking for a sensitive document called Footprint. His professional assignment has entered their private life, and his insistence that his feelings are real does not repair the betrayal. She orders him out, retrieves the hidden file and arranges a meeting with her contact. Sean follows her across the city, trying to recover both the document and some control over a situation that has suddenly slipped away.
Alison loses her pursuer long enough to reach the meeting. She hands the document to the man waiting for her, expecting him to expose its contents. Instead, he throws her over a railing. Sean arrives too late and discovers her body. The opening leaves him with a death rather than an answer, and gives the rest of the episode a memory of violence behind its apparently ordinary encounters. A year later, the story returns to London, where Slough House is busy with an inventory of unwanted records.
River resents the work and quarrels with Catherine about it. Lamb, meanwhile, attends a medical appointment and shows little interest in advice about his health. Afterwards he notices a man following him. Catherine attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where Sean presents himself as someone struggling with loss. He approaches her afterwards and invites her for coffee. Their conversation starts with the familiar language of recovery, but Catherine notices a signal to another person and becomes alarmed. When Sean mentions Jackson Lamb, she knows that this is no accidental friendship.
Catherine tries to get away and contact the office. Another member of the group delays her by asking for directions, and Sean catches her before she can reach safety. As she is bundled into a car, she drops a hairpin. Elsewhere, Louisa’s brief encounter with a man ends when he helps himself to her ice cream: hidden inside is the diamond she took during the Glasshouse affair. Shirley and Marcus endure an evening with Roddy, whose ambitions towards Louisa are as unwelcome as ever.
The next morning, Catherine has not arrived at work. Lamb recognises that her reliable routine has broken and sends the others to investigate. Shirley and Marcus establish that she never returned home; Louisa retraces her movements and finds disabled cameras and the discarded hairpin. River remembers bumping into a stranger near Catherine. Before the team can act together, he receives a photograph of her held at gunpoint. A caller orders him to Barbican Bridge immediately and threatens to kill Catherine if he tells anyone. River is made the next target of the same operation.
Turning points
Reveal turning points
The Istanbul sequence makes grief and deception inseparable from the beginning. Sean can have loved Alison and still have betrayed her trust; those two facts do not cancel one another. Once she is dead, his determination becomes easier to understand without making his later treatment of Catherine acceptable. The opening asks viewers to keep both judgements in mind rather than choose a simple hero or villain.
Catherine’s dropped hairpin is a tiny act of resistance with an enormous practical value. She cannot overpower her captors, but she can leave something that a colleague will recognise. It gives Louisa a physical trace when the cameras have been disabled. That contrast matters: the abductors prepare against electronic surveillance while Catherine creates a clue that depends on observation and familiarity.
Lamb’s alarm also gives the office a different meaning. Catherine is usually the person trying to keep other people’s working lives in order. When she disappears, the team recognises how much its daily routine relies on her. Her absence is more persuasive than an elaborate warning would be. Lamb does not need her to have left a dramatic message; he knows she should have been there.
The final demand isolates River from that collective knowledge. It turns loyalty into a lever by giving him almost no time and forbidding him to consult anyone. His instinct to move quickly is a genuine strength, but here it is exactly what the caller wants. The cliffhanger therefore grows out of character: River is not offered an irresistible puzzle so much as an unbearable consequence if he pauses.
Book vs show
Reveal book and television spoilers
Mick Herron’s Real Tigers (2016) opens with Paul Lowell, dressed as Spider-Man, meeting a supposed fellow protester dressed as Batman on a London rooftop. Television replaces that prologue with Alison and Sean’s Istanbul story.
In the novel, Catherine already knows Donovan: he is a former lover from her drinking years. On screen, he manufactures an introduction through her recovery meeting, making their apparent connection a recent deception.
The book’s abduction follows Catherine leaving work. “Strange Games” moves the approach to an AA meeting and coffee afterwards, giving her captors a different way to exploit a routine she trusts.
Characters and actors
Catherine notices the danger before the others know there is an operation. River becomes its courier, Louisa finds the trail she left, and Lamb turns an unexplained absence into a search. Sean Donovan and Alison Dunn supply the opening’s emotional and operational stakes.
Linked locations
The story moves from Istanbul to London’s offices, a recovery meeting and a café. Slough House is the centre of the search, while the Barbican meeting instruction narrows River’s next move to a nearby public walkway. Taverner also visits an MI5 records facility.
Trivia
Apple released the first two Series 3 episodes together on 29 November 2023. The opening’s Istanbul setting is a substantial addition to the London opening of Real Tigers, rather than a new place name attached to an unchanged scene.
Questions and answers
Why does Lamb know something is wrong?
Catherine has missed work without explanation, which is out of character. Checks at her home and along her route then establish that she has been taken.
What clue does Catherine leave?
She drops a hairpin while being abducted. Louisa finds it near the café after noticing that the surveillance cameras have been disabled.
What is River told to do?
He must go straight to Barbican Bridge and keep the threat secret. The photograph of Catherine at gunpoint gives the caller immediate leverage over him.