My Take | What happens when little England still thinks it is Great Britain
Sarcasm and cynicism in the hit spy series ‘Slow Horses’ may be a truer representation about the state of the UK than what is on the BBC news
Gary Oldman is the god of acting, or at least one of the gods. His latest incarnation as Jackson Lamb, the unwashed, unkempt and verbally abusive former spymaster put out to pasture by MI5, in Apple TV+’s hit series Slow Horses, is pure gold.
It’s the exact, and likely deliberate, opposite of George Smiley, the stoic, repressed and gentlemanly MI6 spy whom Oldman played in the elegant 2011 film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy from John Le Carre’s famous novel about Cold War espionage.
Why go to the movies infantilising the audience with comic superheroes and fantasy characters when the best adult dramas are all on pay TV?
Now into its fourth season, the series has great plot twists, based on Mick Herron’s spy novels. But the sarcasm, biting jokes and cynical exchanges between the characters – inserted into the series by scriptwriter Will Smith who is not the Hollywood actor – are so laugh-out funny they sometimes make me watch them on repeat.
The humour is quintessentially British, the single national trait that appeals most to this former colonial subject from Hong Kong.
But the TV series, much like the books, are actually deadly serious. It’s a bleak commentary on what happens when Little England still thinks it is Great Britain. It makes you wonder whether its representation of the national security business isn’t accurate.
There is the fictional intelligence headquarters in Regent’s Park, all sleek, gleaming and hi-tech, and then there is Lamb’s derelict Slough House in central London – the MI5 equivalent of Siberia – where agency rejects go to die. They are the “losers, misfits and boozers” sung and co-written by Mick Jagger in the series’ theme song.