Los Angeles, Dec 18 (IANS): Hollywood legend Gary Oldman has found "great joy" in playing the Falstaffian and flatulent British espionage operative Jackson Lamb in the Apple TV+ series "Slow Horses", which has just launched Season Two.

The "Harry Potter" star also confirmed he will play the role of former US President Harry Truman in one scene in Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer", reports Deadline.

Lank-haired Lamb plays the operative in charge of a host of lost causes exiled out of harm's way to Slough House where they wind up defending the realm from harm. Lamb looks shambolic in a shabby raincoat, weather-proofed by beer stains and slops of Kung-pao chicken, and yet you can never underestimate him.

"I don't know how nice Jackson is really," he told Deadline. "I think that rather than seeking a career in the spy world, the spy world finds you. And so he is loyal and has a very strong sort of moral compass and is in a very questionable career in terms of morality and ethics. There's a ruthlessness to him," added the actor about Lamb, who leapt from the pen of novelist Mick Herron.

Season Two is based on Herron's second Lamb story "Dead Lions", which finds Lamb and his motley crew investigating the curious death of Dickie Bow, played by Phil Davis (Vera Drake, Trying).

Oldman believes that a comparison can be made to John le Carre's George Smiley and the 64 year-old played the wily Smiley in director Tomas Alfredson's Oscar-nominated "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", which was based on le Carre's 1974 book of the same name.

"It's that ruthlessness and it's also perspicacious," he adds. "You are always three or four chess moves ahead of the opponent. He has that sort of mind but outwardly his cover is being a sarcastic, bitter, flatulent slob. But I love the fact that he's publicly offensive and that's the great joy of playing him."