Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Irvin, 1979)
On this day* back in 2019, I posted this personal appreciation of one of the greatest television series of all time (and its sequel).
Both these series follow one mild-mannered English spy’s obsessive competition with his fanatical opponent on the other side of the Iron Curtain. George Smiley (Guinness) is called out of retirement because the late head of the British Secret Service, known as the Circus, believed there was a mole near the very top of what we would now call the Strategic Leadership Group, someone who had been sabotaging operations, betraying agents and sewing discord for decades.
Smiley’s counterpart in Moscow is codenamed Karla (an early Patrick Stewart performance who thanks to his hairline often played much older than his years in those days) and in the second series Karla has made an unlikely error of judgement opening up the possibility that – again called out of retirement – Smiley might finally get one over on his old adversary.
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There’s something about watching Cold War thrillers made when the Cold War was still at its height. An extra layer of tension instead of nostalgia or kitsch. The most recent BBC adaptation of le Carré occasionally fell into this. The Little Drummer Girl was so well art directed that it made the 70s seem cool, but we can tell from the Guinness-era stories that the 70s were the very opposite of cool. They were drab, grey and whisky-soaked. British Civil Service offices were tiny and people had to turn sideways if there were more than three people in a meeting. Even the most expensive cars had to have the windows rolled down by hand.
In Thomas Alfredsson’s 2011 cinema version of the story, meetings are held in a discrete soundproof box that looks like it is covered in Formica – the whole thing is made to look much more glamorous. Feature length also means it skates past important moments as if it isn’t very interested in its own plot – but the plot is very much the point of it all.
* Actually yesterday – 11 February.
Where to watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on Prime Video
Canada: Not currently available online
Ireland & UK: Streaming on Sky
India: Not currently available online
USA: Not currently available online
