The MVP: In Slow Horses, Gary Oldman Elevates Grossness Into an Art Form

Editor’s Note: Welcome to The MVP, a column where we celebrate the best performances TV has to offer. Whether it be through heart-wrenching outbursts, powerful looks, or perfectly-timed comedy, TV’s most memorable moments are made by the medium’s greatest players—top-billed or otherwise. Join us as we dive deep on our favorite TV performances, past and present:

When it comes to great introduction scenes, how many actors can count being startled awake by the sound of their own fart among theirs? And yet, what better way to communicate that this man seems to have hit a dead-end—both in his life and career—than this undignified, unceremonious beginning? 

Surrounded by old takeout containers, Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), is just as greasy. The head of Slough House—an outpost for banished, disgraced British spies—is unkempt and rumpled, a long way off from the sharply tailored poise Oldman embodied as intelligence officer George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). If Smiley was the picture of quiet dignity, Lamb’s power lies in having abandoned any shred of his. His ill-timed (or are they perfectly timed?) farts are biological weapons, frequently deployed to throw conversation partners off-kilter. His hair is limp and uncombed; his pits stained; his gait encumbered by his pot belly. In the spy thriller Slow Horses, passive indifference radiates off Lamb in waves. He’s the personification of the purgatory that is Slough House, a place for people whose careers are stuck in limbo. Oldman plays him as a man dousing his days in drink and detachment, just waiting for the clock to run out. What Lamb does seem to expend his energy on is making himself as repulsive as he can—the excessive relish with which he slurps down his noodles could put anyone off their own lunch. 

Playing Lamb lets Oldman tap into his excellent comic instincts. He gets some of the series’ best lines—“Bringing you up to speed is like trying to explain Norway to a dog,” he tells his recruits—rendered even funnier by the casual, tossed-off brilliance Oldman delivers them with. He can express exasperation and disappointment without ever raising his voice, the calmness of his speech only making the words that much more cutting. Slow Horses has fun playing him against the other characters—his messiness juxtaposed against the prim poise of MI5 Deputy Director General Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), or his taunting humor against agent River Cartwright’s (Jack Lowden) near-perpetual exasperation. “You don’t get to ask questions,” he tells Cartwright in Season 1, Episode 1, “That’s for spies who haven’t shat the bed.” Oldman draws out each word, savoring the insult.

It’s this exact laidback posture that inevitably establishes Lamb as the person in complete command of any situation. Take Season 2, Episode 4, in which he interrogates a woman (Emily Bruni) he suspects of being involved in the death of one of his agents, his composure in sharp contrast to her nerviness. Or Season 1, Episode 5, in which he pulls up to MI5 headquarters as a wanted man, loudly singing along to The Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be” to the mounting frustration of the security teams converging on his car. As he cheekily enunciates every last lyric to the guard barking crisp orders at him, the message is clear—this disheveled figure is the one really in charge here. Even when he’s outranked, it’s Lamb’s unruffled demeanor that acts as leverage, flipping any power dynamic in his favor. When he tells Taverner that the car he’s parked at MI5 has a bomb in the boot later that episode, he delivers that news so calmly that it takes a moment for comprehension to dawn before she’s left scrambling. 

Lamb trades in the art of subtle authority, and Oldman’s disarming appearance and placid intonations are key to the former Cold War agent’s opponents underestimating him. As the series progresses, it becomes apparent that his slovenly attire is a façade concealing a sharp mind. Call him a wolf in Lamb’s clothing. In Season 2, Episode 1, he pretends to be the brother of an agent (Phil Davis) found dead in a bus to gain access to the vehicle. Oldman’s softly sweet line reading of, “He liked buses” to a transport worker (delivered as though suddenly struck by some vital facet of his late brother’s character) is hilarious because this is Lamb adopting the physicality of an old, sentimental man—precisely the kind of person he is not.

And yet, in his own way, he is. Much of Slow Horses’ charm relies on getting the audience to care deeply for the screwups Lamb is meant to mentor, and no one cares harder than him, despite all appearances to the contrary. He’s as if tough love was a person, only much more insulting and profanity-laced. The first time Oldman permits a flash of anger to pierce through his character’s even-keeled exterior is when he’s confronting Taverner in Season 1, Episode 3. One of her elaborate schemes has unraveled, and one of Lamb’s agents (Olivia Cooke) has been grievously injured as a result. “She was shot,” Lamb spits out, underlining the gravity of the fallout of her directives. And he’s genuinely rattled by the death of his agent Min Harper (Dustin Demri-Burns) in Season 2. When another Slough House recruit (Christopher Chung) dismisses the late spy as “okay for an average guy,” Lamb responds with his characteristic bite. “Fucking hell, I hope you don’t get to write my obit,” he says, face as impassive as always, but with a tone that conveys a depth of taken-aback feeling. There’s a streak of cold-bloodedness to Lamb too. He promises the woman involved in Harper’s death protection in exchange for information and gives her what she assumes is an MI5 contact, only for it to turn out to be the number of a local restaurant. Oldman lets a slow smile creep onto Lamb’s face as he strolls off. He hasn’t stuck around long enough to see his vengeance exacted, but he delights in its inevitability.

The most visible display of agitation from Lamb comes towards the end of Season 1, in a flashback scene that depicts him having to kill former MI5 Director General Charles Partner (James Faulker) and one that’s crucial to contextualizing the person he’s hardened into today. Lamb is wracked with tremors in the aftermath, grimacing as he backs away from the body, breathing heavily as he gets to his car. It puts into perspective the pragmatic yet gentle way he breaks the news of a colleague’s death to Cartwright in a previous episode. As his weariness—juxtaposed against Cartwright’s teary-eyed naivete—shows, he’s grown much more familiar with death in his line of work. He’s only this pessimistic because he knows better. Optimism is the luxury of youth. As Lamb admits in Season 3, he’s miserable, and he knows it. It’s in channeling this misery into a source of sardonic humor—a front that reveals as much as he uses it to conceal—that Oldman seamlessly blends Slow Horses’ contrasting, yet complementary tones into a stunning, singular tightrope of a performance. 

Gayle Sequeira is a culture critic and reporter with a focus on TV and film. Her work has appeared in BFI, GQ, The Daily Beast, Inverse, Little White Lies and more. You can find her on Twitter @ProjectSeestra. 

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