How Mick Jagger wrote the theme song to “Slow Horses”

The relationship between TV series and pop-rock songs is anything but new, and we’ve been telling you about it around here for some time. But hearing an unreleased song by one of the greatest rock stars of all time is still something that doesn’t happen often, even in this context.
“Slow horses” is one of the best series of recent years: after debuting in 2022 on AppleTV, it has reached its fifth season: it tells the story of the “nags”, that is, agents of the English secret services of MI5 who were downgraded and exiled in the “quagmire”. In a branch office where they can’t do any damage – or at least that’s how it should be, because their boss Jackson Lamb (an amazing Gary Oldman) always finds himself taking the chestnuts out of the fire for his best colleagues together with his “Slow horses”, in a decidedly unorthodox manner.
The theme song is a wonderful song by Mick Jagger, “Strange Game”, written especially for the series.

Mick Herron, the writer of the “Slough house” series, from which the series is based, is in Italy these days: he received the “Raymond Chandler award” assigned by the Noir in Festival which runs until tomorrow. This morning, December 4, he held a lectio magistralis at the IULM University of Milan, in which he recounted the genesis of the character of Jackson Lamb:
“I didn’t try to create an anti-hero, but simply a character who is aware of the chaos that surrounds us. Gary Oldman is fabulous, he’s one of the best actors in the world and he’s doing a tremendous job. But I don’t think about the actors when I write, I think about the voices of the characters. Writers of my generation, who grew up with film and TV, unconsciously have this type of writing, particularly in the action scenes. But it’s a type of writing that in turn comes from Charles Dickens.”

In the past 7 days, the Corriere della Sera magazine published an excerpt from the afterword of the book “Bad actors” in which Herron recounts the genesis of the series, born during the pandemic. And there is also the story of how it was Jagger, a fan of the books, who proposed to write the song:

During quarantine, Jamie and Will enthusiastically call me (Producer and director, ed).
Guess who spent an hour on Zoom with the music director yesterday? Mick Jagger!
We keep repeating his name for a few moments: Mick Jagger? Mick Jagger. Mick Jagger!
Turns out Sir Mick has read my books and would like to be part of the project.
As always, I am bound by professional secrecy but when I am finally free to share the news, my brother David reminds me that our father had also once met the Rolling Stones, in 1964. That evening the Stones had played at Newcastle City Hall and were staying in a B&B near our house. When dad went to buy the newspaper the next morning, they were there in front of the shop, waiting for the newspapers to arrive so they could read the reviews. There were Mick, Keith and Charlie. And my father, who bought the Journal… sometimes I wonder if they talk about him too every now and then! I decide to ask Mick if we ever meet, which seems quite likely.