A version of this story about Gary Oldman and “Slow Horses” first ran in the drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
Here is how the world was introduced to Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb, distinguished British spy: He is asleep on the couch in his office, a wreck of a room littered with half-drunk bottles of booze, overflowing ashtrays and the remains of several fast-food take-out meals. The camera pulls in, rests a beat on his holey-socked feet, and then: He rips a fart so uproarious, it jolts him upright, yanking him out of his slumber.
This is not the suave world of British spies epitomized by James Bond and John le Carré’s George Smiley (who Oldman played in 2011’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”).