Stinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Slow Horses (Apple TV+), the Stinker Tailor Soldier Spy anti-Oxbridge espionage hit thriller is not new to many. What’s new is that its sixth season will premiere in September 2026 and season7 will soon be in the can. Based on the Mick Herron novels and created by Will Smith, Slow Horses has its tone (or lack thereof) set by Jackson Lamb, played by Gary Oldman, whose myriad other roles included Winston Churchill in the Oscar-winning The Darkest Hour (2017) and the film version of John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). In Slow Horses, Oldman plays the obnoxiously slobbish Jackson Lamb, head of Slough House where MI5 secret agents are banished for ferkups. The grungy London setting for the fictional Slough House is contrasted with the fictional sleek M15 headquarters at Regent’s Park (actually at Thames House).
Slough House, backed by Jackson Lamb’s accrued knowledge of the intrigues with intrigues over the years, is as much as war with headquarters as Britain’s enemies, and it invariable leads the cleverly filmed action. Lamb distributes his mockery and disdain equally to headquarters and to his own team: a well-characterised group of flawed, but ultimately fearless and effective, misfits with sordid back stories. Slow Horses has attracted a quality of cast also including stalwarts Jonathan Pryce and Kristin Scott-Thomas, along with Jack Lowden, Saskia Reeves, Sophie Okenedo, Rosaline Eleazer and Christopher Chung.
Consistently rating in the 90s (100% for the second and fourth series) on Rotten Tomatoes, Slow Horses’ award wins, among a splurge of nominations, reflects the breadth of its production values and Oldman’s dominance. Oldman has done and won it all: an Oscar, Golden Globe award, three British Academy Film Awards and three Primetime Emmy Award nominations (including one for an appearance in Friends). He began acting in theatre and rose to the Royal Shakespeare Company with credits in a spread from Cabaret to Entertaining Mr Sloane to Hamlet. His film roles have skated easily from Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy to the Oscar-winning role as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour –with Churchill’s wife Clementine played by Kristin Scott Thomas, Jackson’s Lamb’s nemesis at the Park inSlow Horses.