Jack Lowden is one of the names currently tipped to play 007.

Slow Burner

Jack Lowden and Gary Oldman steal the show in Slow Horses, the sleeper hit that captures the mundanity and pettiness, not the glamour, of M.I.5

By Stephen Armstrong

Last summer Jack Lowden met a fan. The star of Slow Horses was cycling past a pub at lunchtime when a man ran towards him. “He was so drunk that he carried his pint with him and dropped it,” Lowden says, laughing. “He stumbled and went, ‘Mate, I just wanna say I really love Sea Horses.’ ”

Nothing says that an actor is in a hit TV show more than being heckled by a drunk. Sea … sorry, Slow Horses, though, is not your usual smash. It is a classic “sleeper hit”. Hidden away on Apple TV+, it has taken three series for the spy drama to break cover.