Mick Herron identifies most with JK Coe, not Jackson Lamb, in Slow Horses.
JK Coe, played by Tom Brooke, is the most mysterious member of Slough House.
Coe’s backstory involves trauma from MI5 and is revealed in Nobody Walks and Spook Street.
Season 4 of Slow Horses introduces Coe as a deeply traumatized, quietly lethal operative.
There's a character in Slow Horses that's closest to author Mick Herron, and it's not who you think. No, it's not Jackson Lamb, as played by Gary Oldman. Herron has made it clear that he created Lamb from the outside as the ultimate nightmare boss. No, the outcast in Slough House who's most like Herron is JK Coe, brilliantly played by Tom Brooke, who was introduced in season four. Coe is the most mysterious "slow horse," with very little known about him or his past. He used to work in Psychological Evaluation at MI5 before something happened to him that gave him PTSD.
Image: Apple TV+
Brooke told The Radio Times about meeting Mick Herron on set during production of Slow Horses season four: "I met him on my last day. It was going to be before then, but it never happened. Mick told me that Coe is the character who's most like him. His name is Jason Kevin Coe; he's embarrassed by both his first names and so he goes by JK.
"His overall vibe is he just wants people to leave him alone. He's got PTSD, which he keeps in check by pretending to play the piano. But Mick Herron has written him into two books. There's a novella called "The List," but there's another really good full-length called "Nobody Walks", which is sort of a Slough House universe book, which basically gives you his backstory, and it is absolutely horrific.
"So I just did that, really. I've never had a backstory given to me in that way. But if it's there and it's that good, best not to mess with it, really."
In the original stories, Coe begins as a naive psychologist and profiler before ending up as a pawn who gets screwed over in "Nobody Walks", and his next appearance is in the Slough House book "Spook Street", which was adapted in season four of Slow Horses, where Coe makes his first appearance on the show. He plays a more prominent and edgier role in the show as a deeply traumatised but also the most lethal of the slow horses in moments not in the book, including where he delivers lethal violence with the least effort, and his heartbreaking words of comfort to Shirley Dander when she mourns the loss of one of their own.
The fifth season of Slow Horses premieres on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, 24th September.
Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
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