By Louise Rugendyke

Copyright theage

The quietly spoken, 37-year-old Chung is sitting opposite me in Sydney. He is a much less imposing presence than Ho and his accent is all over the place. Chung grew up on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, but his accent betrays how much time he has spent in the UK. But that’s not all. His mum is Irish, his dad is Malaysian Chinese and his wife is Scottish. In other words, there is a lot going on.

“I grew up in a household where the Australian accent wasn’t the typical accent,” he says. “I went to school in Mount Eliza in Melbourne, and all the kids were very Australian there. But in my home life, there was such an amalgamation of accents, and it was never really that broad. And I come from quite a musical family, so listening to accents and the way they go into me, it’s like diffusion, and I don’t know that I’m doing it.”

Chung has been with Slow Horses since the show’s beginning in 2022. Adapted from crime writer Mick Herron’s Slough House book series, the show follows the “rejects” of Britain’s MI5 security service who have been banished to the crumbling Slough House (hence their nickname “slow horses”) for crimes and misdemeanours against the service.

And while some of those problems are obvious – gambling, drug and alcohol addictions, ops-gone-wrong – Ho is there because he is, well, deeply unpleasant. And even though he relishes destroying the lives of those who have done him wrong (usually sensible women who have refused his advances), he still can’t quite figure out why he’s in Slough House.

Despite all this, season five, which is based on the book London Rules, does offer Ho some opportunity in the lady stakes – an actual, IRL girlfriend – and for Chung, the chance to take a bigger bite out of the role.