Wow, I don’t think you want to make Jackson Lamb the boss. He never misses an opportunity to belittle, insult, and put down his employees. He’s a complete wreck himself, and not much better off than his colleagues at Slough House – a detachment of failed MI5 agents, with Lamb as “executive”. The fact that there is more to this heap than meets the eye and that there is a lot more behind Lamb’s facade than meets the eye at first slowly unfolds over the six episodes of „Slow Horses“ – an Apple Original, which the streaming service in this country has unfortunately given the subtitle “A Case for Jackson Lamb”, for whatever reason.
Lamb’s team is really not to be envied: Lamb resides on the upper floor of the Slough House, which you not only have to access via a backyard, but which you can only enter through a rusty metal fire door that always jams. He always wears the same dingy clothes, has greasy hair, a three-day beard, smokes and drinks constantly. If he wants to speak to someone he either calls across the hall for assistant Catherine Standish, with whom he seems to have some history and who is a dry alcoholic; which doesn’t stop Lamb from offering her a drink. Or he stomps on the ground, which is the signal for his team on the floor below to come up to him. There’s the clever Sid Baker, who has something of a special role in the team, then Louisa Guy, computer whiz Roddy Ho (he’s supposed to be at Slough House because he’s too good for MI5), Min Harper, Struan Loy and River Cartwright, who messed up an airport training session and got a disciplinary transfer. A lot revolves around him because, according to his own claim, he ended up wrongly in Slough House and senses an intrigue.
All this doesn’t bother Lamb at all, on the contrary, he takes every opportunity to hit River. You haven’t quite settled into this setting yet, and the case of season 1 is already pending – a young comedian is kidnapped and is to be beheaded – nationalist actors want to make an example of him. Lamb quickly realizes that this is all staged and sets out to save the doomed case. In the course of the investigation, however, he and his team come into focus because Diana Taverner, Deputy Director General of MI5, wants to get rid of the whole group. But she didn’t reckon with Lamb: “They’re all complete losers, but they’re my losers!” he tells her, and as a viewer you realize for the first time that there’s more to everything than you thought.
The rest of the time it’s just great fun to follow the plot. The story of Season 1 follows Mick Herron’s first novel of the same name and is designed for six episodes. That’s a good thing, because that’s how the season feels optimal at every moment – no lengths, no rushed actions, but a perfect narrative pace. The English comedy author Will Smith manages an excellent adaptation – and a solid mixture of suspense, intrigue and moments of shock, garnished with the gruff nature of Jackson Lamb and the efforts of the “Loser” troupe, but also the case save. We also experience some surprising twists and turns, hardly anything is really foreseeable, a lot is cleverly threaded – and also well staged by director James Hawes, who captures and puts everything together in a rather observational, almost classic way. The focus is on the story and the characters, and as such, Hawes’ work is an important piece in the puzzle of Slow Horses as a whole. And then there’s the title track, written and published by Rolling Stone’s Mick Jagger – “Strange Game” just goes perfectly with “Slow Horses” – a brilliant choice.
Without wanting to belittle the cast’s performance, one has to state that the season definitely thrives on the performance of Gary Oldman, who stages Lamb perfectly. You can believe this heartless, sophisticated, sly, drunken guy at any time, and he does it so well that at some point you develop a certain sympathy for Lamb yourself. He doesn’t really mean to offend his team, it’s more his way of shaking them up. He carries a heavy burden himself, as is resolved at the end of the first season – also as a precursor to the second season, which Apple also added to the program in 2022. Two more seasons have already been ordered.
Images: Apple
Shame Gary Oldman is mulling retirement even though there are ever more Slow Horses they remain a must see and a must read. Although Mick Herron’s Bad Actors meanders a bit, it is still almost as compelling a read as Slow Horses. Mind you, that’s not surprising: on Amazon, Mick Herron is described as “The John Le Carré of our generation” and it’s all to do with bad actors and slow horses. Who would have thought le Carré might be associated with “any generation”! In terms of acclaimed spy novels, Herron’s Slough House series has definitely made him Top Of The Pops in terms of anti-Bond writers. For Len Deighton devotees that ends a long and victorious reign at number one.
Raw noir espionage of the Slough House quality is rare, whether or not with occasional splashes of sardonic hilarity. Gary Oldman’s performance in Slow Horses has given the Slough House series the leg up the charts it deserved. Will Jackson Lamb become the next Bond? It would be a rich paradox if he became an established anti-Bond brand ambassador. Maybe Lamb should change his name to Happy Jack or Pinball Wizard or even Harry Jack. After all, Harry worked for Palmer as might Edward Burlington for Bill Fairclough (real life MI6 codename JJ) in another noir but factual spy series, The Burlington Files.
Of course, espionage aficionados should know that both The Slough House and Burlington Files series were rejected by risk averse publishers who didn’t think espionage existed unless it was fictional and created by Ian Fleming or David Cornwell. However, they probably didn’t know that Fairclough once drummed with Keith Moon in their generation in the seventies. Both books are a must read for espionage illuminati.