Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, the most disgusting MI5 agent in fiction, running a department of agents he is paid to bore into resignation. Five seasons in, the only TV spy thriller still capable of surprise.
| Gary Oldman | Jackson Lamb |
| Jack Lowden | River Cartwright |
| Kristin Scott Thomas | Diana Taverner, MI5 Deputy DG |
| Saskia Reeves | Catherine Standish |
| Olivia Cooke | Sid Baker (S1) |
| Rosalind Eleazar | Louisa Guy |
| Sophie Okonedo | Ingrid Tearney (S4–) |
| Hugo Weaving | Frank Harkness (S4) |
Slough House is a banishment department of MI5. Agents who’ve disgraced themselves — via operational failures, addiction, paranoia, sexual indiscretion — are sent there to do paperwork until they quit. They almost never do. Jackson Lamb runs it; he is the worst boss in television, possibly the worst character in television, by some distance the funniest.
Lamb is unwashed, drunk, sexist, racist (selectively), brilliant, loyal to his agents, and morally located somewhere between a Cold War cynic and a chronic depressive. Oldman plays him without vanity. The performance has been BAFTA-nominated repeatedly and is widely considered Oldman’s finest sustained television work.
Mick Herron has written ten Slough House novels. Each season adapts one: Slow Horses (S1), Dead Lions (S2), Real Tigers (S3), Spook Street (S4), London Rules (S5). Seasons 6 and 7 will adapt Joe Country and Slough House respectively. The novels are British comic-thrillers in the John le Carré mode — bureaucratic, bleakly funny, deeply uncomfortable about the trade.
Most prestige spy shows want to be Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Slow Horses wants to be a workplace comedy that occasionally has dead bodies. The combination has held up across five seasons because Oldman is Oldman, because Will Smith’s adaptations are surgical, and because Mick Herron’s plots are reliably better than the prestige category requires.
Season 5 (October 2025) was the most-watched season yet. Apple has greenlit through season 7. The Mick Herron source material runs through about ten books. There is no plausible reason this should slow down.
Best spy thriller on television. Best workplace comedy on television. Probably the best Gary Oldman performance you can stream right now.