Apple TV has set a September 16 premiere for Slow Horses season 6 and dropped the first image of Lenny Rush, giving the spy series a firm return date and its latest new face. Episode 1 arrives that day, and the season will roll out weekly until October 21.

That makes now the moment viewers start asking when the next chapter lands and how long it will last. The answer is clear: the sixth season will run for just over five weeks, with new episodes arriving each week through the middle of October.

Rush’s casting adds another layer of interest, but his role is still being kept under wraps. Apple TV has shown him alongside Christopher Chung’s Roddy Ho, yet has not said who he is playing, leaving the new image to do more teasing than explaining.

The season is adapted from Mick Herron’s sixth and seventh Slough House novels, Joe Country and Slough House, and it begins with the Slow Horses on the run while Diana Taverner pulls them into a fatally high-stakes game of retaliation and revenge. Adam Randall is back to direct, with co-executive producer Gaby Chiappe handling the television adaptation.

Slow Horses follows the spies who have been sent to Slough House, the dumping ground for outcasts under Jackson Lamb, and it has become one of Apple TV’s biggest hits. A seventh season is already in the works and will adapt Herron’s eighth book, Bad Actors, which gives the September 16 launch more weight: this is not just another return, but the start of a long, steady run that keeps the series moving well into next year’s planning.

What remains open is the one thing Apple TV has not yet given away. Rush is in the season, his first image is out, and the premiere date is fixed — but the role itself is still hidden, and that mystery is now part of the draw as the countdown to September 16 begins.