If this is about a spot performance review, I have to tell you, I am absolutely killing it right now.”
It is one of the many lines that have already earned cult status in Apple TV’s Slow Horses, the sharpest, grubbiest and most consistently entertaining drama on television at the moment. Delivered with magnificently off-hand contempt by Gary Oldman — who plays the foul-mouthed, flatulent and faintly feral Jackson Lamb — it captures the show’s genius in miniature. This is espionage stripped of glamour, scrubbed free of fantasy and left to fester in the stale air of bureaucratic exile.
If you imagine the spy trade as Martinis, casinos and impeccably tailored tuxedos, think again. At Slough House — the dreary dumping ground for disgraced MI5 officers — there are no Aston Martins and no baccarat tables. There are only paper trails, career dead-ends and the persistent smell of takeaway noodles. There are, incidentally, no horses either, should you be wondering about the title.
Lamb presides over this ragtag cohort of intelligence service rejects with the air of a man who has long since stopped pretending to care. His team — agents who have slipped up, stumbled publicly or simply embarrassed the service — have been put out to pasture. In the ruthless ecosystem of espionage, mediocrity can get you killed. At Slough House, it merely gets you ignored.
Yet, time and again, these overlooked misfits find themselves confronting the threats that the polished operatives at Regent’s Park cannot, or will not, handle.
After five minutes in Lamb’s company, one begins to understand his particular brand of magnetism. As he once puts it, with typical delicacy, he is little more than “a babysitter for f***-ups”. And yet there is a strange charisma to him. Lamb has no filter, no patience and no interest in social niceties. He drinks two or three bottles of whisky a week. He insults with operatic fluency. He looks as though he has slept in the same crumpled suit since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But beneath the grime lies a mind several moves ahead of everyone else in the room.
So far, there have been five taut seasons, with sixth and seventh instalments already in the works. The most recent series opens, quite literally, with a bang: a far-right gunman opens fire outside a shopping centre. The show has never shied away from uncomfortable territory. Nationalism, radicalisation, institutional rot... all have been explored with a bracing lack of sentimentality since the first season.
Based on the razor-sharp Slough House series of novels by Mick Herron — season five draws from London Rules — the adaptation is overseen by Will Smith, not the Hollywood actor but the writer behind The Thick of It and Veep. The pedigree shows. The dialogue crackles with menace and mordant wit in equal measure.
At the centre of the latest chaos is Roddy Ho, the preening, socially maladroit hacker played with scene-stealing precision by Christopher Chung. Roddy is the sort of man who believes himself to be a criminal mastermind while compulsively checking online forums for validation. His delusion is grotesque, occasionally infuriating and, against all odds, faintly endearing.
Yet it is Oldman who remains the gravitational force. His performance as Lamb may well be career-defining — no small claim for an actor who has already embodied Smiley (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). Dishevelled, slovenly and gloriously inappropriate, he reportedly consumed 17 bowls of noodles in a single sitting for one scene. He could, with his stature and accolades, easily dominate the ensemble. Instead, he elevates it. He makes space for everyone to shine.
The anti-Bond
If James Bond is all sheen and swagger, Lamb is nicotine stains and indigestion. Where Bond embodies escapist fantasy — outdrinking, outpunching and outwitting all in sight — Slough House offers something closer to lived-in reality. These spies eat chow mein from a nearby Chinese restaurant. They argue about expenses. They nurse grudges and hangovers in equal measure.
And yet they are no less heroic. Broken, out of shape and frequently exasperating, they are nonetheless dedicated to saving Britain. The show flips the genre on its head by inviting us to root not for the elite but for the exiled. In doing so, it captures something deeply human. Most of us, at some point, have felt sidelined, underestimated or written off. Slough House becomes an unlikely metaphor for resilience.
Lamb himself appears perpetually horizontal, feet on desk, eyes half-closed. But that is when he is thinking hardest. While the sleek MI5 operatives play checkers, Lamb is playing chess in his head. His apparent indolence masks a razor-sharp strategic instinct.
Oldman has spoken warmly of Herron’s creation. He relished the prospect of a spy drama without the prosthetics and marathon sessions in the make-up chair. “Great character, great stories, and a wonderful bunch of people to work with,” he said in an interview with ABC News. The look, he notes, is mercifully straightforward: one suit, the occasional change of tie, a winter coat and a grubby mac for summer. Add broken veins on the nose, a hint of jaundice and generous quantities of grease in the hair, and Lamb is ready to shuffle into action.
Moral fog
The members of Slough House behave as one might expect spies to behave — morally elastic, emotionally guarded, perpetually suspicious. And yet Lamb, for all his abuse, protects them fiercely. “They are a bunch of losers,” he growls at one point, “but they are my losers.” It is both insult and oath of loyalty.
River Cartwright, played by Jack Lowden, serves as a partial audience surrogate: ambitious, frustrated and quietly determined to prove himself. Over time, the show suggests that he belongs exactly where he is. Failure here is not an ending but a recalibration.
There are explosions and gunfire enough to satisfy any action purist, yet the true power of the series lies in its atmosphere. London is rendered in moody greys, claustrophobic corridors and dimly lit offices. It feels isolating, airless, bureaucratically suffocating. Every frame has cinematic weight. In an era when streaming platforms cancel promising dramas at the altar of algorithmic underperformance, Apple has shown rare faith. Quality, it seems, still counts.
There are minor quibbles. The six-episode British season can feel stingy; pacing occasionally wobbles when a plotline lingers too long. But these are trifles beside the cumulative effect. Each finale lands on a cliffhanger that all but compels immediate continuation.
In Herron’s novels — and faithfully mirrored onscreen — characters are defined less by authorial exposition than by how others perceive them. It lends the story an unstable, shifting texture. No one is entirely knowable; reputations are fragile things.
Bond may be fantasy. Lamb is something braver: a reminder that heroism often looks disreputable, that loyalty can hide beneath layers of cynicism, and that salvation sometimes comes from the margins. Pour yourself a stiff glass of Jameson, settle into the sofa and allow Slow Horses to work its grubby magic.
Gary Oldman is masterful. The writing is ruthless. And Jackson Lamb, who cheerfully admits he enjoys “boiling people’s piss”, may just be the most unlikely hero on television.