A selection of Gary Oldman’s favourite TV shows: “Oh god, I loved it”
In the early 2020s, Gary Oldman told his producing partner, Doug Urbanski, that he was interested in exploring the world of television. Since becoming a movie star in the early ’90s, the brilliant Londoner had only dabbled in TV with one-episode roles in Friends and Greg the Bunny. However, over the years, he began indulging in the ‘Golden Age of TV’ and watched so many highly acclaimed shows that he began getting jealous of the actors who plied their trade in that long-form medium. What shows captured Oldman’s imagination, though, and helped convince him to dive in head first with AppleTV+’s Slow Horses in 2022?
When Oldman asked Urbanski to keep an eye out for a television show he could really sink his teeth into, he had a few conditions. He wanted to use his natural accent as much as possible and didn’t want a part that required applying a lot of makeup or wearing an elaborate costume. He had loved playing George Smiley in the excellent 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy film, so he admitted that something in the spy arena would be ideal – and that makes perfect sense because one of his favourite shows is The Americans, Joe Weisberg’s six-season FX spy drama that ran from 2013 to 2018.
During a wide-ranging interview with Playboy magazine, Oldman spilt the beans on his favourite shows. While lamenting the state of the modern world in true ‘old man yells at cloud’ fashion, Oldman confessed that even though new music and reality TV mostly baffled him, he was extremely taken with many of the top shows of the day. “I do watch television. I’m a huge fan of long-form TV,” he mused.
“Mad Men,” Oldman noted as he began namechecking his favourites. “I loved True Detective; Matthew
McConaughey gets better and better. Boardwalk Empire, The Americans, House of Cards—oh God, I loved it.”
Fast-forward ten years, though, and Oldman had another couple of modern classics to add to his list. During an IndieWire round table interview, he quoted a Brian Cox line from one of HBO’s most popular shows in recent memory, marvelling at its foul-mouthed perfection. “God, Cox had one of the greatest lines when he said, ‘What is that smell in here? It’s like a cheesemonger died and left his cock in the brie.'”
With the kind of mischievous grin that can only come from quoting one of Succession’s best Logan Roy zingers, he added, “That is…that is fantastic.”
Oldman also has a taste for violent historical dramas, if his love of History’s Vikings is anything to go by. He admitted he religiously watched that show until the lengths of its seasons began to confuse him. “I couldn’t quite work out why there was just one season that wouldn’t end,” he chuckled. “I was bingeing it, and it comes up: ‘Next episode,’ ‘next episode.’ I was like, ‘Shit.’ So, I looked it up, and there was one that was 20 episodes!” This double-sized season didn’t sit well with the Harry Potter star – although that may have simply been because he was watching at three in the morning.
To Oldman, watching so much great material on TV over the years was inspirational, and he confessed, “It makes me want to create a show and sit back and get all that mailbox money”. He admitted to feeling pangs of the green-eyed monster when it came to TV actors because he had only ever revisited a character in a movie sequel, which he viewed differently from “developing a character over a series, over many seasons.”
Luckily, Urbanski came through for him in the best possible way when he found Slow Horses and the slobby, vicious, and deceptively brilliant spy Jackson Lamb. He smiled, “Doug had to tick all the boxes, and he came back and said, ‘I think I found it. I found the thing you’re looking for.'”
So, after decades as a fan, Oldman finally found his way to that TV “mailbox money”, as he put it. And who knows, perhaps Slow Horses is already on the favourites list of other Hollywood A-listers?
