NEW YORK (AP) — Jackson Lamb is an Englishman who solves crimes, but he’s not your typical dapper, charming type. One indication is that he often lets off gases quite loudly.

Lamb — represented by Gary Oldman — is the centerpiece of Apple TV+’s “Slow Horses,” a critical favorite that seems to have only recently gained popularity in the U.S., now in its fourth season. The series was ignored at the Emmys for two seasons, but heads into Sunday’s broadcast with nine nominations, including best drama series.

“I think it’s been a slow process,” says Oldman, who received an Emmy nomination for his series “Lamb.” “Now more and more people are coming up to me and saying, ‘I really like the show.’ I’ve become that guy on TV, which I actually quite like.”

Lamb is the comically unpleasant leader of a band of down-and-out British spies nicknamed the “Slow Horses” because they work out of the humble Slough House, far from the glittering center of London’s power. They’ve messed up their careers in a variety of ways, including botched surveillance operations, gambling addictions, and leaving a top-secret file on a train.

Lamb’s hair is unkempt and greasy. He wears a shabby, dirty raincoat and his socks are always lying on his desk. He smokes too much, drinks scotch at work, is extremely politically incorrect and blunt to the point of rudeness. His voicemail says, “This is Lamb. If I haven’t answered, it’s because I don’t want to talk to you.”

He is also extremely loyal to his team and has the sharpest – if messiest – knife in the drawer. He can determine a person’s salary from a footprint and is at least three steps ahead of everyone else. He refuses to follow rules – a stubborn middle finger to the establishment.

“If there’s a sign saying ‘No Smoking,’ then Lamb is smoking,” says Oldman. “He’s just a damn pig. We just like to watch him. Maybe we wish we were that direct.”

Will Smith, the showrunner and executive producer, says we meet Lamb late in his career, after he has run afoul of the hierarchy and been fired by others.

“He’s an enigma. He’s a mystery because he’s not what you know him to be. I think the character is fascinating on that level,” says Smith. “You meet him at the end of his career – he’s burned out – and then you realise what made him what he is, and you get little glimpses of the man he was and can be when he needs to be.”

Many of the series’ most delicious scenes come when Lamb faces his nemesis, the perfectly coiffed Diana Taverner, played by Kristin Scott-Thomas, who is in many ways Lamb’s opposite: polite, diplomatic and aspiring to the top of MI5.

The series also stars Jack Lowden, Jonathan Pryce, Christopher Chung, Rosalind Eleazar, Aimee Ffion-Edwards, Kadiff Kirwan and Saskia Reeves. A well-known fan of the books is Mick Jagger, who co-wrote the title song.

Slow Horses is about underdogs, and it’s fitting that the show is emerging from obscurity to win Emmys.

“It’s nice when the reviews come in and people like it and it gets recognition,” says Oldman. He is looking forward to sitting around a table with his co-stars on Sunday and “having a little laugh.”

Slow Horses is based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, and Oldman credits Herron with creating such an entertaining Lamb. “I just responded to it immediately,” says the actor.

Critics have succumbed to his influence. Los Angeles Times Referring to the attention and recognition, he asks: “What took so bloody long?” And Empire magazine says Oldman “steals every scene he appears in, either with biting sarcasm or acid indigestion.”

“Lamb is about as far removed from the tuxedoed, Savile Row-style James Bond as one could be, and yet he is the best spy we have seen on screen in years,” said New Musical Express.

Smith feels the love – a pleasant headwind as the actors put the finishing touches on the show’s fifth season.

“There are a lot of evangelical fans out there who have done a really great job of attracting audiences. It seems like we’ve reached some kind of critical mass,” he says.

Lamb is one of Oldman’s unforgettable characters, which also include Sid Vicious, Lee Harvey Oswald, Count Dracula and Winston Churchill. “Of all the characters I’ve played, he’s right up there,” says the actor.

It is not the first spy he has played – Oldman once played John Le Carré’s much more elegant George Smiley. “One wag said I had evolved from George Smiley to George Smelly and I wish I had thought of that myself,” he says.