BAZ BAMIGBOYE: Gary Oldman… From Smiley to the slob who came in from the cold 

Gary Oldman was in celebratory mood. 

He’s just reached The Beatles’ famously serenaded age of 64, and he’s got his teeth sunk into the role of a lifetime.

He plays a seedy slob of an espionage operative, in the best spy drama to reach TV screens in years.

Oh, and he hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol for a quarter of a century. ‘Do you know what the odds are of making 25 years of sobriety?’ he asked me. 

Luckily, it was a rhetorical question. ‘It’s incredibly low!’ he exclaimed, adding: ‘To think back, I couldn’t go 25 minutes without a drink.’

Life is good, he told me.

His new role is Jackson Lamb, a farting Falstaff, I call him — though Lamb has more guts than Shakespeare’s Sir John.

Jackson is at the messy centre of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series of spy thrillers. He’s the antithesis of John le Carre’s Establishment spook, George Smiley. 

Lamb’s more ‘polytechnic’ than Oxbridge, the actor quipped.

He has lank locks, holes in his socks — and he passes wind . . . a lot . . . as he oversees a coterie of Intelligence Service agents who, for various reasons, have been banished to the slurry pit known as Slough House.

Their so-called betters over at MI5 HQ sneer at them. Chief sneerer is the duplicitous Diana Taverner (known as Lady Di), deliciously played by Kristin Scott Thomas.

But don’t be fooled. Lamb is no screw-up. Underestimate him at your peril. He will berate and insult his underlings, but it’s clear that when the chips are down, he’ll do what’s best for them. 

‘They’re my losers,’ as he tells Taverner.

Most of the four-letter words Lamb utters in the show are addressed to 007 wannabe River Cartwright, perfectly captured by Jack Lowden. 

‘Prince Hal to my Falstaff,’ Oldman said, warming to my theme. (Lowden, on the other hand, thinks Lamb and River are more like Morecambe and Wise.) Whatever, they’re a priceless pair.

The thing is, although there are some great action sequences, ‘they’re not superheroes’, Oldman said. 

‘They’re people like us. They’re relatable.’

Even so, he reckoned Lowden could make a good James Bond. ‘We mentioned it more than once on set,’ he said. The thought occurred to me, too.

Herron’s books are darkly humorous; and the task for director James Hawes, who filmed all six episodes of Slow Horses (the first book in the series) was to get the tone right. 

It’s remarkable how that’s been achieved — something Oldman puts squarely down to Hawes’s direction. 

‘He did all the heavy lifting,’ he said, ‘getting the cast right — and everything else.’ Including the choice of the superb opening credits song, written by Mick Jagger and Daniel Pemberton.

The camaraderie off set — the company included Saskia Reeves, Olivia Cooke, Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung, Dustin Demri-Burns and Jonathan Pryce — fuelled the humour in front of the camera. 

‘There’s not a wrong ’un in this cast,’ Oldman said, adding: ‘There’s wonderful freedom in playing a character who doesn’t give a f***.’

Originally, Herron intended to make Lamb a mythical character. ‘He’s on the seventh floor, somewhere; and people talk about him — but he was never going to appear,’ Oldman told me from his home out in the Palm Springs desert.

But the author couldn’t resist fleshing him out. Thankfully, because the role’s a gift for Oldman.

The Oscar winner’s longtime business partner Douglas Urbanski set up the production with See-Saw Films and Apple TV+, and then took it to him.

Urbanski informed him there’d be no need for wigs, prosthetics or padding. He’d already gained weight for the film Mank. 

And although Lamb’s clothes look like they’re from a jumble sale, they were carefully crafted.

For one of their key scenes together, Scott Thomas asked Oldman whether he’d been ‘working on your farting’. 

Indeed he had. So he was disappointed to learn that he didn’t have to provide the accompanying sounds, which were put in months later. 

‘It’s a funny job, sometimes,’ he mused.

Oldman’s read all of Herron’s Jackson Lamb books, and is hoping more will be filmed. Each book would be half a dozen episodes. 

There’s chatter that after Slow Horses is unveiled next Friday, a second season, based on Herron’s second book Dead Lions, could be released later in the year.

An extended stint as Lamb would suit the actor to a T. ‘If one thinks of it as a sort of semi-retirement — to be able to play Lamb for three or four years — well, it’s a lovely way to slow down,’ he told me.

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Ken and Judi have an eye on the prizes 

Judi Dench will be joining Kenneth Branagh at the Oscars — but they won’t be hugging.

The theatrical dame, nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for her pivotal role in Branagh’s autobiographical film Belfast, is 87 — making her the oldest of this year’s nominees — and, like the hosts, she is being Covid cautious.

Branagh has been nominated in three categories: Director, Original Screenplay and Best Picture. 

He will be through the ten-day quarantine in time for Sunday’s ceremony, as will Ciaran Hinds. Belfast- born Hinds, also nominated, plays the grandpa, opposite Judi’s grandma.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organisation behind the Oscars, has introduced stringent policies in the hope of preventing the live show from turning into a super spreader event.

A lot of people caught the bug at the Baftas in London.

Seating inside LA’s Dolby Theatre has been slashed by a third; and only nominees, presenters and essential media are allowed on the red carpet. Attendees have to give proof of at least three negative PCR tests before they’re allowed into the venue on Sunday.

‘It’s a crumbling Oscars,’ one official told me. ‘We’re praying we all get through it intact.’

That comment applies to more than the pandemic. The very essence of what the Oscars stand for is being questioned. Eight of the 23 categories — craft nominees such as Best Sound, for instance — have been relegated, and won’t be fully televised.

This has caused a schism in the Academy, with complaints that the organisation is kow-towing to the ABC network contracted to broadcast the show.

There are fears that audiences watching at home have become bored with the ceremony and just want to tune in for the main event — Best Film and the acting winners.

To counter that, ABC has packed the show with TV and sports celebrities to try to prevent viewers switching off. Traditional Oscar fans may do that anyway.

Beyoncé is going to be singing Be Alive from King Richard, while Billie Eilish will be joined by her brother Finneas for a performance of the James Bond theme No Time To Die.

Will they be enough? And will anyone be talking about the films on Monday? Will Jane Campion’s Power Of The Dog sweep up the big prize — or will CODA or Belfast ruin its night?

Why West Side glory beckons for Ariana 

Ariana DeBose has become a star, thanks to her role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s film version of West Side Story. But it’s a part she initially turned down — even before auditioning — because she didn’t believe she had a hope of winning it.

‘Four times I invited her to audition — and four times she declined,’ Cindy Tolan, the movie’s casting director, told me.

‘I think she figured that a filmmaker like Spielberg would go after a name,’ surmised Tolan, who won a Bafta for casting the musical. Determined not to take no, or a no-show, for an answer, she tracked DeBose down. ‘I explained that she had the kind of acting chops — she could sing, dance and act, all at the same time — that Spielberg was seeking,’ she said.

Tolan finally persuaded her to read for Anita. ‘I knew she could do it, but I had to convince her of that,’ she told me.

Versatile DeBose has worked her way up through the ranks in musicals on Broadway. ‘I just learned on the job, and kept going,’ DeBose told me, modestly.

I happen to have caught her in many of those shows in NYC, including the original production of Hamilton at the Public Theater. She also appears in song and dance show Schmigadoon!, that’s running on Apple TV+.

Filmmaker Matthew Vaughn worked with her last year on thriller Argylle. And he said: ‘The thing is not to pigeonhole her for musicals. She can do it all.’

The actress was recently contracted to appear alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Russell Crowe and Alessandro Nivola in Marvel film Kraven The Hunter, part of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.

DeBose will head back to London after Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, where she’s the front-runner to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar — something I predicted in this column last year. The trophy will join her Bafta, Screen Actors Guild and other prizes on the mantelpiece.

Not bad for someone who had to be dragged to the audition.

Watch out for…

Lily James (pictured) whose profile has been much boosted by that Pam & Tommy TV drama, about how Pamela Anderson’s privacy was violated by the theft of the private sex tape she made with Tommy Lee. James was great as Anderson. 

Sure, the physical transformation was startling — and attracted a lot of attention — but James also caught the common sense underpinning the Baywatch performer’s eye-popping exterior.

Everybody wants to work with James now — on screen and on stage — but theatre will have to wait while she considers some film roles. 

More may come her way, too, after she appears as a presenter at Sunday’s Academy Awards.

Bradley Cooper, whose film Maestro, about composer Leonard Bernstein (his great works include the West Side Story score) will film on locations in the UK and Italy, as well as in the U.S.

Those European spots will be handy for British actress Carey Mulligan, who stars alongside Cooper (who plays Bernstein) and Jeremy Strong of Succession fame.

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