# Why spies love Slow Horses > Gary Oldman on playing the smelliest, smartest spy on TV, and why real MI5 officers watch the show. - Title: Why spies love Slow Horses · Vanity Fair | Shortify - Summary: Gary Oldman on playing the smelliest, smartest spy on TV, and why real MI5 officers watch the show. Slow Horses works because its heroes are rejects who… - Keywords: slow horses, gary oldman, apple tv, spy thriller, mi5, spies, love, Slow, Horses, Vanity Fair - Source: Vanity Fair — https://vanityfair.com/story/gary-oldman-slow-horses-interview - Author: Natasha O'Neill - Published: 2026-09-14T14:28:12.928+00:00 - Read time: 2 min - Topics: slow horses, gary oldman, apple tv, spy thriller, mi5 ## The man who can't relax Gary Oldman has played Sid Vicious, Dracula, Lee Harvey Oswald and Winston Churchill. Ahead of the season six premiere on September 16, he says he still can't sit still. > I'm not very good at putting my feet up and kicking back ## Meet Jackson Lamb A greasy-haired, chain-smoking former spy master of Cold War Berlin who looks like he slept in his shirt and tie. The whole point is that you underestimate him. > You would dismiss him, and it turns out that he's the smartest man in the room. ## Cruelty as comedy Lamb's favorite sport is mocking his own team. When an agent dies after a tumble down the stairs, he tells the man responsible exactly what he thinks of his aim. > If you meant to kill him, he'd still be alive. ## He actually cares Under the contempt is fierce loyalty. Lamb spends his days shielding his misfits from the machine that dumped them on his doorstep. > There's a real loyalty to the slow horses and protecting them from that bureaucratic monster ## Lady Di takes the chair Kristin Scott Thomas's Diana Taverner finally becomes first desk at Regent's Park this season. She is Lamb's foil or his friend, depending entirely on what she needs that week. ## A service with blood on its hands MI5 in this show lies, covers up blunders, double-deals and burns its own people, all under the banner of national security. Most spy thrillers won't sit in that gray. ## He turned down the top job Lamb could have run the place. He chose exile in Slough House over a building full of corrupt politics, after a past that reportedly included Stasi torture and watching a woman he loved be killed. > Lamb could've been first desk. He didn't want it. ## The mission shrank to his crew Whatever belief Lamb had in protecting citizens' freedoms got ground down across the Cold War and the Age of Terror. What's left is looking after his own people. > He gives the impression he doesn't care, when in reality, I think he cares more than most ## The head of MI5 is a fan Oldman says real intelligence officers vouch for the show's accuracy. He did a luncheon and Q&A with a thousand MI5 staff in London. > The spies love this show. ## The work nobody hears about Oldman met the counterterrorism and cyber teams and came away struck by how much gets quietly stopped. The public only learns about the failures. > We only ever hear about the bad things, when occasionally something slips through the net. ## An incompetent deep state Taverner is sharp, maybe Lamb's equal, but she's boxed in by thin funding, a bureaucracy with no strategy, and politicians saving their own skin. That gap is where the slow horses operate. ## One mistake and you're out Slough House is where agents are parked until they quit. The rejects then run the riskiest operations, proving they aren't losers while conveniently shielding the top brass from blame. > To find yourself in Slough House, you only have to make one mistake. ## Failures who aren't failures Author Mick Herron got the idea copyediting job-discrimination reports and set out to write about people who fail. Oldman thinks viewers see their own flaws, debts and broken marriages on screen. > They're flawed, and I would hope that the audience sees somewhat of themselves in these people. ## Key takeaway Slow Horses works because its heroes are rejects who still do the hardest jobs, which is close enough to real life that actual spies recognize themselves.