Trotting With "Slow Horses"

Jackson Lamb's Demoted Spies Get the Job Done

The last month, I've been embedded in Slough House, the fictional purgatory for incompetent or supremely unlucky British spies. Their ramshackle residence is a slight pun on Slow Horses, the Apple TV+ series, is in its third season, a stream in which I was swept too fast, too soon.

Based on a series of books by British author Mick Herron, Slough House is where the burnouts and the failures are sent to live in misery, most unaware that their return to Regent's House, the gleaming modern headquarters of the domestic spy agency MI5, is a delusional dream. They're done, stuck in a bureaucratic nothing-burger in a house too dilapidated for most rodents. It is there that they are abused and belittled by Slough House's leader, the equally dilapidated Jackson Lamb.

If you haven't seen Slow Horses, I recommend commencing, because it features a career-topping performance by one of the English-speaking world's greatest actors, Gary Oldman.

Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana …