By Tom Percival
Copyright metro
Nick Mohammed doesn’t think Slow Horses is niche anymore. (Pictures: Dave Benett/Getty Images)
For what felt like the longest time, Slow Horses was often described as ‘the best show on TV you’re not watching’ or ‘underrated’.
It’s easy to see why.
Streaming on the relatively niche Apple TV Plus, Slow Horses hasn’t always enjoyed the attention that other, less well-reviewed shows on bigger streaming platforms did.
Now, though, as the sensational spy series enters its fifth season, one of its stars thinks it’s time to give this underdog spy series its due.
Nick Mohammed, who plays Zafar Jaffrey, the beleaguered Mayor of London in the latest series, told Metro that Slow Horses has real ‘traction’ these days and he knows why.
‘I think when it first came out, it might have slipped under the radar a little bit and almost had a bit of a cult following,’ the 44-year-old said.
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‘But I think it’s grown and become a lot more ubiquitous, particularly now that the show’s in its fifth season.’
So what’s the secret to Slow Horses’ success? Well, Nick thinks it’s because they ‘churn them out’.
‘They’ve really churned them out,’ he jokes. ‘It sounds derogatory, I don’t mean it like that, because there’s never been a dipping quality. But they’ve been able to do a new season pretty much every year, which is incredible.
‘I think now, because the show’s got a lot of traction in the States, I don’t know if it is under the radar anymore. I think increasingly it’s become a really kind of popular show in its own right.’
Nick plays the mayor of London, Zafar Jaffrey, in the new season (Picture: Jack English)
Nick’s not wrong. Since it debuted in 2022, the show – which stars Gary Oldman as curmudgeonly spymaster Jackson Lamb, who leads MI5’s worst agents – has hit a sort of critical mass in popularity.
No longer is it the type of thing TV critics have to get oddly evangelical about late in the pub
Instead, it’s a show advertised on the side of buses, and your parents want to talk to you about it.
Nick, however, has been a fan for years, in particular the way it straddles the farcical and the thrilling, and that’s a major part of why he wanted to star in the show.
Gary Oldman plays the curmudgeonly and flatulent spymaster Jackson Lamb (Picture: Apple TV Plus)
‘Slow Horses is one of those great shows where it’s a drama, and it’s very emotional and thrilling, but it also has a lot of levity and humour in it.’
‘It’s definitely one of the most serious things I’ve ever done, but I loved the challenge of it.
‘It’s a very specific tone, and that took a little bit of time for me to get my head around exactly how it should be pitched and portrayed, because you’re not playing for laughs.’
Indeed, Nick really enjoyed getting his teeth into a complex character like Jaffrey, who he describes as ‘left-leaning’ but also ‘a bit vain, and self-serving’
Nick enjoyed the challenge og getting to grips with the ‘very specific tone’ of Slow Horses (Picture: Jack English)
Of course, any resemblance to real-life politicians is purely coincidental, and Nick was keen to play down any accusation that he’s based Jaffrey on Sadiq Khan.
‘People keep making comparisons to Sadiq Khan, and possibly rightly so, because he’s the current Mayor of London, but it’s not based on him by any means,’ he explained.
‘If anything, it’s an amalgam of lots of different kinds of quite plastic, quite vain politicians who are quite sound bitey and like to be loved.’
Slow Horses season 5 is available to stream on Apple TV Plus with new episodes dropping every Wednesday.
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