Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
                                                                                                                  
Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (1979) - 9.0



This is the 1979 seven-part mini-series starring Alec Guinness based on the John le Carre novel. I think this is the second or perhaps third time I have watched this through. I can't think of any other mini-series I have watched more than once other than the follow-up to this one - Smiley's People from 1982. I can't recall if I read the book first or this. The book is brilliant. Either way, even now knowing who the mole is it doesn't really matter that much. It was never the suspense that grabbed you but Smiley and the manner in which he arrives at the answer. It is slow and meticulous and that is the beauty of it. No one wanted to rush it or put in false excitement. They trusted the audience to just stick with it. They don't anymore. Too many channels to choose from.  Social media has given us all attention deficit syndrome. If nothing happens for the first 30-minutes we are on to something else.



Nothing really happens here till the fifth episode when it all starts coming together. The first four is just Smiley picking up the pieces and trying to assemble them. In most ways George Smiley is a sad non-descript man. Ousted from the Circus, his wife cheating on him with various men, his former colleagues keeping their distance from him, his days and nights spent alone. The film ends with his wife Ann telling him "The world is a puzzle to you isn't it George".  But when an agent stationed in Europe comes with a tale of a mole within the Circus, they turn to George to unravel it. The bowler hat, the horn-rimmed glasses, the eyes that give nothing away. There is a mole in the upper echelons of the Circus and he has to be identified. Quietly. Slowly. No fuss. The film with Gary Oldman gets kudos - I am curious to see how they can squeeze this down to two-hours.



Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) - 7.5



It is hard not to watch this without feeling that Alec Guinness is looking over your shoulder making comments like "nicely done" or "I wouldn't have gone that way". This is a good adaptation of the John le Carré novel, but if you have read the book or watched the Guinness six-hour mini-series, then this goes by at the speed of light. There is not nearly enough fleshing out of the characters of the suspected moles - there is not enough about Smiley's relationship with his wife. This is two-hours long and obviously they had to make a lot of draconian decisions about what to include and what to exclude. I think they did the best they could - but it was a shame that actors like Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, John Hurt get very little to do but sit around a table a few times.



But what it is of course primarily missing is the meticulous way that Smiley goes about unravelling the whole thing. I am not sure if I hadn't read the book or seen the mini-series that I really would have understood it. So, my recommendation would be either to read the book or watch the mini-series first - Oldham is very good, Guinness is great - and then watch the follow up mini-series Smiley's People where Smiley outwits the great Karla.  There are some wonderfully acted scenes from Oldman who often to my ears sounds like Guinness did as Smiley - when he talks about meeting Karla years before or in his placid moments of thought or the flashback to the good times with his colleagues - now knowing one of them is a traitor.



Smiley is one of the great characters in literature and John le Carre wrote about him in ten novels - sometimes as the major protagonist, sometimes as a side character. In film Smiley is in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Deadly Affair (by James Mason), the two Guinness TV series - this one and Smiley's People, Denholm Elliot in A Murder of Quality and Oldman here. I wonder if Oldman's portrayal of Smiley got him his role in the TV show, Slow Horses, where he is a bit Smiley like but much messier and dissolute around the edges.  Le Carre began writing his first Smiley novel while still working running agents for MI-5, partly as an antidote to all the unrealistic spy novels coming out in the 1960s. This is how it was really done. This is directed by Tomas Alfredson from Sweden who also directed the terrific Let the Right One In (the Swedish version).  Mark Strong, Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch (in a dreadful haircut) are also in this very fine cast. .Damn, watching this makes me want to watch the Guinness series again.  .