Gary Oldman is to lead the cast of the first UK production for streaming service Apple TV+.

He’ll star in spy thriller Slow Horses which tells the story of a team of British intelligence agents who have made career-ending mistakes and find themselves serving in a dumping ground department of MI5 called Slough House.

The series is an adaptation of Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb novels and is being written by former The Thick of It star Will Smith.

Oscar-winner Oldman plays the group’s leader, the “brilliant but irascible” Lamb, who’s been described as “crime fiction’s Falstaff, a glorious Rabelaisian monster” and as looking like “Timothy Spall gone to seed”.

No word yet on a release date.