James Hawes gives actors time and unlikely stories a convincing everyday setting. We recommend his television more readily than his careful first cinema film: the patience that helps Slow Horses can leave One Life looking flat.
Fi1m perspective
In One Life (2023), James Hawes keeps the camera on Anthony Hopkins and lets the actor do almost nothing. We cried, despite seeing how carefully the film was trying to make us cry. Staying with Hopkins gives his stillness time to affect us, and here the restraint feels like a considered choice rather than a cautious habit. Hawes trusts actors, but he can be too cautious about everything around them.
His television work makes the stronger case for that patience. After directing Doctor Who episodes in 2005–2006, he worked on Black Mirror, including Hated in the Nation and Smithereens, and directed the whole first series of Slow Horses (2022). We value Black Mirror for its straight-faced absurdity and the performances that make its distress matter, though that judgement belongs to the programme rather than to Hawes alone. In Slow Horses, Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb and the office are more rewarding than the ordinary thriller plot.
One Life marked his move into cinema, with a script by Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake. Its plain telling suits Nicholas Winton, but the Prague scenes look like television and the care taken over the story too often leaves it flat. We wanted the direction to be as particular as Hopkins's performance. His second feature, the Rami Malek spy thriller The Amateur (2025), took him back towards espionage.
In Lanterns (2026), he directs the first two episodes and shares an unhurried approach with fellow directors Geeta Patel and Stephen Williams. Cinematographers Gregory Middleton, Florian Hoffmeister and Armando Salas keep the daylight grey and the nights lit by sodium and headlamps, leaving the ring's green almost alone as a saturated colour. John Paino's cramped sheriff's office and Stephanie Economou's low strings help keep the drama modest in scale. The trouble is that the plot keeps pulling us away from Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, the programme's strongest reason to watch. Start with the first series of Slow Horses, provided an office full of failed spies sounds more appealing than an ingenious thriller plot.
Biography
James Hawes is a British television and film director. He has worked in British television drama since the mid-1990s and has also produced documentaries for British and American networks.
His credits include episodes of Doctor Who (2005–2007), for which he won a BAFTA Cymru award; the television film Enid (2009), which earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Director; Black Mirror (2016–2019); Penny Dreadful (2013–2015); Snowpiercer (2020); Slow Horses (2022); and the feature film One Life (2023). He is attached to direct episodes of the forthcoming series Lanterns (2026). He has also received a Royal Television Society award for The Challenger Disaster (2013).
