GET SET FOR BIG LITTLE SPIES

JACK LOWDEN and Kristin Scott Thomas (both pictured) have joined Gary Oldman in the television adaptation of Mick Herron’s brilliant Slough House book series, about a group of M15 misfits annexed into obscurity.

Except that the rejects, led by former Cold Warrior Jackson Lamb (Oldman) and wannabe 007 River Cartwright (Lowden) see more action than the ‘proper’ intelligence officers at HQ. Scott Thomas has been cast as one of the two spymasters who oversee Lamb and his flock in Slow Horses, named after the first Slough House novel. Oldman has l ong been attached to the project (he is an executive producer, with business partner Douglas Urbanski). It starts filming in London on Monday, and is being produced by Iain Canning and his partners at See-Saw Films for Apple TV+. The spooks in Slow Horses may be goofballs (Herron describes them as ‘less MI5, more 9 to 5’) but they’re no pushovers. Lamb’s the brains, while Cartwright, drip-fed John le Carre novels as a child, wants to emulate his grandfather, who was a master spy. Lowden will arrive on set having just completed filming Benediction, in which he portrays Siegfried Sassoon, for director Terence Davies. Oldman does enjoy hardboiled espionage tales. He played George Smiley sublimely in the 2011 film of le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.