Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on iplayer at the moment

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

The Alec Guinness series from 1979. Have seen it several times before and also read the book and its sequels (Le Carre fan). In my view it's much better than the Gary Oldman film, although that was quite good. 7 episodes.

I've been watching it too even though I have no clue what's going on. I love it for the grim 1970s interiors and shots of London.

Yes, so do I! I saw it when it first went out. I don't think I'd read any Le Carre before that.

I love you a wee bit for pointing this out gaspode

I love it.

I’ve see it lots of times and almost know the script off by heart. I’m fascinated by that period and the Cambridge Five. Ben Macintyre’s book on Kim Philby is excellent. MI6 was very class ridden. It would have been better with some working class people involved. They might not have been so easily fooled! Right up until his defection, MI6 didn’t believe Philby could be a spy because he had the “right” background..

Ooooooooooo. I've seen both films but not the tv series. Off to have a nosy. Thank you

Tks for the tip off!

I’ve read lots of Le Carre. The one thing I don’t like about his books is his women characters.. He admitted that it was a weakness in his writing. I think Graham Greene is the same. They only seemed to know women from a very narrow background - the same very middle class background as themselves so I don’t think their women characters were written very well

We're up to episode 5 here. 6 and 7 tomorrow, probably. Ian Bannen is marvellous as Prideaux. The book fills in more background on the little lad he befriends at the prep school. (Nothing seedy, fortunately.)

The opening and closing credits are sublime.

Not altogether surprising he struggled with female characters, given his upbringing. Mother disappeared when he was very young. Prep school, public school, army, male college at Oxford, male-dominated Foreign Office/MI6. First marriage failed. Second marriage lasted in spite of his repeated affairs. Still love his writing, though!

Yes I agree. They both are brilliant writers but the public school background probably has a lot to answer for. Graham Greene also worked for MI6 I think. I think having just finished watching the series again, I might go back and watch the Oldman film.

This time I had subtitles on so sat through the choir boy singing at the end. Just beautiful. I think Geoffrey Burgon also did the music for Brideshead Revisited ( the Jeremy Irons one).

Thanks for the heads-up op, love Le Carre. The genre is awash with poorly written female characters - just watched David Hare's Worricker Trilogy on NF and the female characters are so unconvincing.

I videotaped this when it was repeated on BBC about...ooh, must be 20 years ago? At first I couldn't follow much of what was going on, but I was fascinated by the characters and the descriptions of 'tradecraft' (dead letter drops, fallbacks, all that), and so I re-watched it until I grasped it better, although there are still some things I don't quite follow in it (can't remember what they are right now).
Le Carre is the critics' favourite, and I can sort of see why, as he colours his writing with lots of subtle nuance. However, personally I prefer Len Deighton's books, as he has a less flairy, more 'no nonsense' style of writing which I prefer.

Yes Len Deighton also brilliant writer. About 30 years ago me and my friends at University were big readers and it was at the time he had a series out think it was Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match or something like that and we read them all. I might have to find them again and see if they have stood the test of time.

I’ve just read Peter Wright’s Spycatcher book which was banned in the 1980’s. The world described has some similarities with Le Carre. They were all members of London Clubs. One wonders how they afforded it on civil service salaries. Yes they were probably reasonably high grades but even so..

I've read a lot of Len Deighton too, with great enjoyment. He's still alive, aged 92, but stopped writing in the 1990s.

thanks so much for the recommendation.

I watched this over a few nights on BBC4. The film with Gary Oldman was a bit too stylised for me - trying to be cinematic - and their meeting rooms seemed a bit vivid, that said it had some great memorable moments , the layout French song Le Mer and the line Smiley delivers near the end 'Well, what ARE you then?' In the film, the flashbacks are meant to be easier as it shows Smiley changing his spectacle frame but I didn't grasp that Prideaux's time at school was not a flashback.

The series is odd as all the blokes look really old but people did back then, it was a tough life. But I couldn't quite get interested in the different suspected moles really so didn't much are who it was. That said, it's easier to spin this for a few episodes than in a film, you get to live with the characters and wonder who the mole is.

Le Carre did The Night Manager too, and has a new book out posthumously I understand. He actually had only 10 or 15 years on Ian Fleming but Fleming died in his 50s in 1964. So Fleming might have lived to see Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye if he'd gone to roughly the same age, I think.

Thank you for pointing this out--I love this adaptation so much and would love to watch again.

'play out song' I meant but autocorrect.

Deighton also not quite a contemporary of Fleming at all but writing at the same time, just a decade difference in starting, but Deighton much younger of course.