Doug Urbanski Found Next Project to Keep Gary Oldman From Retiring

Slow Horses , as the show’s executive producer Doug Urbanski is keen to say, is not your grandfather’s spy show. The Apple TV+ hit — up for five Emmys, including best drama series for its fourth season — takes the cloak-and-dagger espionage of a John le Carré thriller and squeezes it through the tea-stained filter of snarky British comedy (lead writer Will Smith cut his teeth on Armando Iannucci’s caustic pre- Veep political satire The Thick of It ).

In place of a debonair James Bond superspy, we have Jackson Lamb, the slovenly, flatulent remnant of a once-great MI5 agent. Played with shambolic brilliance by Gary Oldman , Lamb oversees a team at Slough House, a shabby off-site dumping ground for disgraced and rejected agents.

Slow Horses , as the show’s executive producer Dou