Gary Oldman: cinema’s master of disguise returns as Slow Horses’ seedy spook

Gary Oldman in London last year for the 25th anniversary re-release of Nil by Mouth, which he wrote, directed and starred in. Photograph: Kate Green/Getty Images

There are bad bosses, and then there’s Jackson Lamb: rumpled, smelly, discouraging and mildly corrupt. Yet for fans of Slow Horses, the returning Apple TV+ series based on the espionage fiction of Mick Herron, this is a character that reliably emits a magnetic, congealed gleam. Like a day-old doner kebab.

Lamb, rendered in grimy perfection for the small screen by Gary Oldman, is the underachieving spymaster who has been mysteriously placed in charge of a sidelined team of defunct spooks.