The London-set Apple TV+ show is like John le Carré with gags – and the best insults since Veep, writes Catherine McGregor.

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The lowdown

First things first: it’s got nothing to do with horses. “Slow horses” is a nickname for the disgraced agents sent to Slough House, the grotty MI5 outpost at the centre of Mick Herron’s series of spy novels of the same name. When Apple TV+ decided to start adapting Herron’s books it was presumably decided that “Slough House” was too mundane a title, or perhaps too redolent of the smell of paper manufacturing.

Slow Horses, the show, debuted in April this year. Now, just seven months since season one ended, it’s already making a very welcome return.

The good

The very best thing about Slow Horses has nothing to do with spying at all. It’s Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb – a deceptively innocent moniker for one of the most terrifically foul characters to ever cross our screens. He burps. He farts. He smokes. His hair is lank and greasy. The front of his overcoat is stained black from decades of buttoning and unbuttoning with ashy fingers. He’s horrible to everyone, particularly his own staff, whom he routinely insults as losers and morons.

And yet, the slovenly Jackson Lamb is an utter delight to watch. Oldman doesn’t just inhabit his character, he rolls around inside him like a pig in freshly churned mud. He’s great in every scene he shambles into, but the ones with his boss, MI5 bigwig Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), and his protégé, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), are where you find the real gold. Diana’s frosty disdain for him during their canalside tête-à-têtes is glorious; the two of them are so good together you wish they could go on trading barbs forever. River’s visible disgust at Jackson’s abhorrent table manners, meanwhile, is one of Slow Horses’ best running gags.

It feels a little trite to call Slow Horses “uniquely English” but what other nation could make a spy thriller as sardonic as this? It’s John le Carré with really good jokes, where nothing works out as it should (until, somehow, eventually, it does), and even the team’s most ambitious and talented young agent – in fact, especially him – gets thwarted at every turn, often by those on his own side.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the plot yet, and that’s because while the story is gripping enough – this time around the team are on the trail of sleeper Russian agents embedded in British society – it’s not really the point of Slow Horses. You watch it for the depiction of authentically messy spycraft, for the snappy pacing, for the London locations (which have had a subtle glow-up since wintry season one), and for the best intra-office insults since Veep. And you watch it for Jackson Lamb, the greatest horrible character currently on TV.

The bad

I love pretty much everything about Slow Horses, so I’m reaching here. But Mick Jagger’s theme song, ‘Strange Game’? Just awful.

The verdict

Season one of Slow Horses was wonderful; season two is faster, funnier and even more assured. There are nine other books in Mick Herron’s Slough House series – here’s hoping Gary Oldman and crew are around for many more seasons to come.