Reel Rundown: Binge British spy series ‘Slow Horses’ before its Season 4 premiere Wednesday; Gary Oldman calls for it

Gary Oldman has had an eclectic career. He’s played every kind of character from punk rocker Sid Vicious in 1986’s “Sid and Nancy” to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 2017’s “Darkest Hour,” the latter role winning him a Best Actor Academy Award.

Now Oldman is starring in “Slow Horses,” a British spy series that premiered in the spring of 2022 on Apple TV+. I’ve just finished binge-watching the first two seasons and expect to finish Season 3 before Season 4 premieres on Wednesday.

Based on the novels of the British mystery writer Mick Herron, “Slow Horses” revolves around what’s referred to as Slough House – a repository for MI5 agents who, for individual reasons, have been deemed not good enough to remain in the intelligence agency’s first ranks but not bad enough to deserve being fired.

So, they – among them River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), the grandson of a now-retired but still legendary MI5 officer (Jonathan Pryce) – wend their days away doing little while being continually berated by their immediate superior Jackson Lamb (played superbly slovenly by Oldman).

The conceit of the series is that the dashed dreams, if not outright boredom, the agents are forced to endure is designed to impel them to quit on their own. And Lamb, whose hard-drinking behavior masks the abilities he once showed in his own fabled career, makes it his mission to do whatever he can to help them out the door.

But more is at work than we see at first glance. Some of the agents, not just Cartwright but Lamb’s administrative assistant Catherin Standish (Saskia Reeves) and a few others, are anxious to get back in the agency’s good graces. And so when a crisis appears, as it does in the first season with the kidnapping of a young Pakistani student by what appears to be a right-wing group, they jump.

Lamb gets involved, too, for reasons that have as much to do with his distrust of MI5’s second in command, Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) as it does any protective feeling he might have for his Slough House underlings.

And over the first season’s six episodes, we watch as Taverner and MI5’s first rank screw up, blame the mess on Slough House and force Lamb and his second-rate warriors to find a way to clear their names and foil the kidnapping.

Meanwhile, Season 2 features Lamb and company facing two separate threats: one, the possibility of Russian sleeper agents being planted in England; and, two, a planned meeting between Taverner and a famous Russian dissident that goes disastrously wrong.

A variation on the Smiley novels of John le Carré, though with a determined sense of dark humor, “Slow Horses” blends that humor with the dirty, and sometimes violent, side of government espionage. And while Lowden adds a bit of youthful energy to the series, it is Lamb who contributes most of the wit through his ongoing jibes and insults.

The good news for “Slow Horses” fans is that a fifth season of the show is reported to be on the way. Since novelist Herron has written 13 installments of his “Slough House” series, the show’s producers have plenty of material to adapt.

And with Oldman in the lead role, they have just the right actor to make it work.