Posted in: Apple, TV | Tagged: Slow Horses
With Apple TV+’s Slow Horses set to return and a new Slough House novel coming out in September, author Mick Herron discussed Jackson Lamb.
September is a bumper month for Slow Horses and original series author Mick Herron – the fifth season of the Apple TV+ series is premiering, and so is the publication of “Clown Town,” the ninth and latest novel in the hit series. That means the man himself has been doing interviews to promote both his book and his show, and of course, Air Mail asked him about who or what inspired Jackson Lamb, the slovenly, burned-out master spy played to perfection by Gary Oldman in the TV series.
“When I introduced Lamb onto the page, I did invoke Timothy Spall, it’s true. This was largely to avoid writing a detailed description: one allusion would do all the work, I decided, and Spall has frequently presented on-screen in a manner not a million miles from how Lamb might plausibly appear. It was a throwaway line that understandably keeps cropping up in interviews.”
Slow Horses Reminder: Jackson Lamb is Horrible
“If I had ever known, or worked with, anyone like Jackson Lamb,” said Herron. “I’d have spent more time in therapy than at my laptop this last decade and a half. No, he’s purely fictional…. And for all Gary’s wonderful performance, the Jackson in my head—who is a voice, not a fully shaped human—remains the same as he has always been.”
In the incestuous and meta world of live-action adaptations, Gary Oldman has played both John le Carré’s George Smiley and Jackson Lamb, polar opposites of British spy archetypes. Herron reckons if George Smiley ever met Jackson Lamb, “One of them would hate the other, yes. I’m not telling you which one, though.”
If you think about it, it’s not hard to assume Lamb would hate Smiley because he despises all the Public School Posh Boys and their privilege, which Smiley is part of. But then, Lamb hates everyone. He’s fueled by hate, and farting is his exhaust. Smiley would dislike Lamb but understand what made Lamb tick: the PTSD, the disillusionment, the burnout, and the class resentment. And that would make Lamb despise him more, because very few people understand Lamb, and that’s how he likes to keep it, as it gives him an advantage.
Season seven of Slow Horses is expected to begin this month as well. It adapts the book “Bad Actors”, which leaves “Clown Town” the only book left to adapt. Does Herron have a final ending to the books in mind?
“There’s an awareness that there should be an endgame,” he told The Guardian, but is keeping things close to his chest. As for Lamb?
“Either he’s an absolutely despicable human being or he’s just pretending.”
Clown Town is published on September 9th and is now available to order. Slow Horses season five premieres on September 24th.
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