When we first meet Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) in Slow horsesthe camera has slid over the debris on his desk and found him waking up with a fart on the couch in his office. It is a fitting introduction for an unusual protagonist: Across Slow horses We see Lamb regularly insult, belittle and smear everyone around him. He is the biggest asshole on television, as unrepentant as he is vulgar. He is also an absolutely bewitching bastard and one of the best on television.
The art of creating the perfect asshole may not seem complicated on paper. Evil, as the saying goes, is a constantand often a childish one at that. It’s easy to imagine evil and to portray it on screen, albeit clumsily. But Jackson Lamb is not just a bad boss or even a bad person. Slow horsesan adaptation of Mick Herron’s Slough House spy novel series, is always very careful in this regard, even when he’s just said the rudest things you’ve ever heard, be it making fun of a person’s addiction, mocking their deceased spouse, or endlessly encouraging his employees to quit.
Oldman plays Lamb like a real pain in the ass – that is, he’s annoying and restrictive, but extremely perceptive and constantly trying to convey something deeper. That’s what makes him so deeply frustrating to those around him: you can ignore him at your peril. But you have to listen to a steady stream of vitriol to find a pearl of wisdom.
Nevertheless, the authors of Slow horses make sure to balance Lamb’s goofy behavior as best they can, not so much to soften it as to give it a strange, caustic logic. He frequently offers Standish (Saskia Reeves), who has been recovering from alcoholism for years, a drink. Showrunner Will Smith (not that one) says it’s his way of checking that she’s still conscious. (“It’s not the traditional way of checking that someone is coping with sobriety,” Smith laughs.) Even the smallest joke or fart is designed to provoke people, test a reaction, throw someone off track, or simply (as is often the case with the people in the park) show that he knows more than they do. All of this plays into the expectations placed on him and his sloppy behavior, even if he simply wants to subvert them.
Image: Apple TV Plus
“Lamb is all about minimal effort. He just wants to sit behind the desk,” Smith tells Polygon. “He would never admit that he’s doing the honorable thing — even though he always does. He saves the day; he always saves people. He steps up.”
But the final piece of the Lamb puzzle comes from a very important character decision: He is neither omnipotent, nor does his backstory excuse his behavior.
As a concept, it’s pretty straightforward. But too much pop culture demands that its protagonists feel like good morals before they feel like good characters. Lamb is far from a shining example of virtue, but Slow horses isn’t designed to make you think he should be secretly received that way either. He’s a jaded jerk, someone so hurt by betrayal in his past that he constantly takes it out on those around him. For Lamb, his abuse is a mercy, a way to keep them from being eaten up like he was. After dedicating his life to MI5 and trusting his friend, he has a guilty conscience and a dirty mouth to show for it. He didn’t want to be a civilian, but he can’t bring himself to serve the institution either.
Like so many complicated protagonists – and increasingly villains – Lamb has good reason to be disillusioned. It’s a late revelation that harks back to his central wound, with what Smith recalls in a single line: “Years ago, Lamb was forced to shoot his friend and mentor Charles Partner, and in return he demanded Slough House.”
Image: Apple TV Plus
In a way, this determines many seasons of Slow horseswhich inevitably come back in some way to how Lamb’s life was destroyed by Partner’s betrayal. But the way we see it mostly leads Lamb to fall deeper into rudeness. His sense of self he keeps all to himself. He uses his sharp spy skills to find out things about people to weaponize and unsettle them. Unlike many of these complicated villains (and their heroes), this isn’t done so we can better understand why he’s actually good; Lamb’s arc is over and the damage is done.
Despite it, Slow horses is smart enough to know that even smoking ruins hide treasures. Perhaps the greatest trick of Lamb’s competence is that he Is still hard at work, even if he dismisses it. He doesn’t know everything, he only knows enough“We always feel like he’s the smartest guy in the room, but once he’s got everything, he lets the Slough Horses do the legwork,” Smith says. “He doesn’t let people in when he’s got the advantage; he doesn’t bother to explain it to people. So he only lets them in on the parts that motivate them.”
In another, weaker series, Lamb might have been a dangerously perfect protagonist with this skill set. Instead, he is the perfect cautionary tale; a completely unlikable guy who you love and never want to work with; the ultimate asshole. Even after four seasons Slow horses feels like a character exercise without allowing the tragic backstory to become the defining feature. That’s what allows Oldman to sprinkle beautiful little moments of hope through all the muck: you can see the changes when he stumbles upon an unexpected crime scene or drops hints that a member of his team is missing – hell, even Lamb’s profile is marked by Oldman slouching his body and ducking his head to make his body seem larger than it is. He transforms into the man he was, the man he could still be but no longer wants to chase. There’s nothing he can do about it, any more than he can help being so broken in the uncaring world of espionage. As Smith says, he’ll always get out – even when he’d rather not take his feet off his desk.
Slow horses Season 4 premieres on September 4 on Apple TV Plus.
