To paraphrase Charles Baudelaire, the greatest trick Slow Horses ever played is convincing us that Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) never stops farting.
Midway through the fifth season of Apple TV+’s spy drama, you might be surprised to learn that there are only eight toots in Slow Horses—so far. After all, Apple has already renewed the series up to Season 7. I know that because, in the best traditions of hard-hitting and essential journalism, I’ve combed through every episode to log and rank every emission.
That may feel juvenile, but if we justifiably argue that New York is the secret fifth protagonist of Sex & the City, we can make the case that Lamb’s flatulence is an equally important member of his team.
We drafted a simple system to sort Lamb’s vapors: We grade for effect and intent. How does Lamb deploy a fart and what does it do? Is it a simple slip or is Lamb weaving a pongy spymaster’s web?
With that in mind, while I repeatedly ask myself what the hell I’m doing with my life, let’s rank every single Jackson Lamb fart from worst to… best?
8. “Work Drinks” (Season 1, Episode 2) ≈32:05
Not so much a fart as a lingering spectre of one. Lamb claims to have just let “a killer” rip, vigorously fanning it at long-suffering Slough House office manager, Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) before telling her to place a call. We’re still getting used to Lamb at this point, so this serves as a continuing introduction to a boorish and allegedly thoughtless old man without impulse control.
7. “Strange Games” (Season 3, Episode 1) ≈14:23
In Season 3’s opening, Lamb combines farting with his other favorite activity, as he lets out an audible parp while napping—on this occasion in the waiting room of a private Harley Street doctor. When one of the toff-ish usual customers complains about the homeless man “making odors,” Lamb rouses himself to rebut, “It’s my colon. Terminal.”
Lamb’s test results are “surprisingly” normal but there’s something going on in there, even if “slow horses” just refers to the glacial speed at which kebabs move through Lamb’s system. Not the most impactful emission, but gets an extra mark for sticking it to the bourgeoisie.
6. “Boardroom Politics” (Season 2, Episode 5) ≈36:35
Now we’re into the good stuff. Caught in an increasingly confusing web by Nikolai Katinsky (Rade Šerbedžija) and his network of sleeper agents, Lamb attempts to orchestrate his own team around multiple developing situations from the desk of MI5 archivist, Molly Doran (Naomi Wirthner). As she wheels into the office, she does so into a lingering stress fart. It’s a measure of how accustomed people are to Lamb’s flatulence in early seasons that all she says, quietly, is, “You best.”
Unflappable though he appears, we all know by now how much Lamb cares for his “Joes.” This is just one of the small ways Slow Horses shows that. Besides, who hasn’t felt a hint of gastric distress in situations far less stressful than Russian agents threatening to bomb London?
5. “Failure’s Contagious” (Season 1, Episode 1) ≈10:27
The term “dog” has its own meaning in Slow Horses, referring to MI5’s internal security. But it’s the animal Lamb most resembles in our first glimpse of him when he produces a fart so resonant that it wakes him from a workday whisky and noodle passout. It doesn’t impact anyone—unless you count what must be one of the worst-smelling couches in the UK—but it introduces us to the slovenliness that we’ll come to love in Lamb over the next five seasons.
4. “Identity Theft” (Season 4, Episode 1) ≈21:25
Speaking of dogs, Season 4’s premiere introduces us to the new top dog, Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley). When slow horse River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) is allegedly shot by his grandfather, and MI5 legend, David (Jonathan Pryce), Flyte demonstrates her naivety in the service by asking Lamb to identify the body and assumes he’ll do so without shenanigans.
In typical Lamb fashion, however, he’s a few steps ahead and, to buy River time in his own investigations, unleashes a reverberating trump beside Flyte as she questions him. As Lamb’s service record and the character before her fails to mesh, Lamb runs rings around Flyte without her catching on to him not being upfront with her. A true spymaster at work.
3. “Negotiating with Tigers” (Season 3, Episode 3) ≈28:35
When incumbent Home Secretary, Peter Judd (Samuel West), tasks a private security firm to probe MI5’s defences, only for the assigned team to go rogue and kidnap Standish, the balance of Lamb’s office is left in tatters. Trying to get his teas made effectively, he tracks down the company’s CEO, Sly Monteith (Gavin Spokes) and locks him in his car with both Lamb and an especially egregious fart.
“I hope that doesn’t go into the groundwater,” Lamb says as Monteith chokes on what we can only assume is multiple days of fermenting noodles. Once again, Lamb is able to push against the expectations of an Eton-adjacent self-perceived elite that makes up so much of the security service and its chums. Having gathered all the information he needs in the wake of so significant a guff, Lamb leaves Monteith to stew in his brewing failure to control his team and Lamb’s MSG-laden leavings.
2. “Tall Tales” (Season 5, Episode 3) ≈12:35
Perhaps no fart in Slow Horses is quite as caustic as this. Slough House is in lockdown after the attempted murder of Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) and the slow horses are chafing in captivity as news reports of exploded penguins roll in. Lamb makes his move, possibly in more ways than one, by dropping a silent but deadly bomb on both his team and the attending dogs that sends all and sundry running.
Asked if that was a fart, Lamb replies: “Mostly.”
It’s a fart so bad that River suggests it might give him lung cancer. Lamb uses it as an excuse to leave the lockdown and search for a stashed weapon. The gambit fails and his team resorts to a homemade flamethrower, but no other fart elicits such a dramatic reaction.
1. “Bad Tradecraft” (Season 1, Episode 3) ≈20:20
No one can actually prove that the bench Lamb and Diana Taverner (Kristen Scott Thomas) share at multiple points in Slow Horses wasn’t removed after becoming a biohazard. But as Lamb grills MI5’s second desk about her increasingly disastrous false flag operation, he props onto one cheek and lets out an absolutely foul emission next to her that lingers into the next season.
“Better out than in… actually, maybe not,” he says.
“God, you’re vile,” Taverner replies.
The relationship and brooding respect between Lamb and Taverner is arguably Slow Horses at its best—and somewhat lacking in recent seasons. But this is the first time we see Lamb deploy his gas tactically and it’s startlingly effective at offsetting Taverner’s holier-than-thou attitude and getting her to open up. After a couple of episodes wondering who Lamb is, this is where we start to realize that farts are secretly the key to being one of MI5’s best.
The post Every Gary Oldman Fart in ‘Slow Horses,’ Ranked appeared first on The Daily Beast.
