Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Great TV Series, Average film

David Cornwell, who went by the pseudonym John le Carre, wrote incredibly detailed books about spies, spying, morality, The Cold War and everything else. Many of his “Classic spy fiction” stories have been filmed or made into TV Serials. 

 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was published in 1974 to universal critical and widespread acclaim. Le Carre even had the British Secret Service MI6 sitting up and taking notice of the degree of realism in his works. No guns. No girls. Definitely no gadgets. This is intelligence work done the old-fashioned way. Assemble the facts. Get the holistic picture. And then act.

 

The book was the first of the three books known as The Karla Trilogy. Karla is the Russian super-spy opponent of British spy George Smiley. TTSS is based loosely on the real-life story of the Cambridge Five, who spied for the Russians, the most famous being Kim Philby, who was supposedly on the fast track to become the head of the British Secret Service, known as C (as opposed to M of the James Bond Series).

 

The characters in the 1979 TV series and the 2011 film remain the same. So it’s easier to narrate the story. Control, aka C (Alexander Knox John Hurt), the head of the service, deputes Jim Prideaux (Ian Bannen/ Mark Strong) on an operation inside Czechoslovakia/ Hungary to get a high-level officer to defect. The carrot? The officer knows about a high-level Russian spy in the British Service and will reveal it only to Control. Jim goes behind the Iron Curtain and is injured in a shootout with the Communist opponents. Months later, he is sent back in a secret exchange and is given a job as a school teacher in a rural school. C is ousted as head along with his trusted man George Smiley (Alec Guinness / Gary Oldman). Sometime later, Ricki Tarr (Hywel Bennet/ Tom Hardy) meets Oliver Lacon (Anthony Bate /Simon McBurney) to inform him of a high-level leak as he had reeled in a Russian defector in Istanbul. She had been suddenly spirited back to the Soviet Union. The new management of Percy Alleline (Michael Aldridge/ Toby Jones), Toby Esterhase (Bernard Hepton/ David Dencik ), and Bill Haydon (Ian Richardson/ Colin Firth) are all suspect. They are also inviolate as they are now feeding the Americans with a high-level Russian source which Control had dismissed as a pure fraud. 

 

Smiley assembles various men from his past who had been loyal to him and Control. Among them is ‘young’ Peter Guillam (Michael Jayston/ Benedict Cumberbatch), who is given the most dangerous task – stealing a register containing the operation details of the day the Prideaux operation has been compromised. 

 

This is where the difference between the TV Series and the film comes in. The TV Series tells the story as it was written in the book – it is all from Smiley’s point of view as he pieces together all the facts by talking to various people.

 

The film tells the story serially and with minimal flashbacks, starting from Prideaux’s capture, Smiley’s departure, Tarr’s arrival and Lacon entrusting Smiley with a task, leading to the final conclusion. And perhaps that is where the two differ in their intensity. 

 

The TV series is simply absorbing.

 

To get into the character of Smiley, Alec Guinness was introduced to the then C – Sir Maurice Oldfield. When the TV Series was finally broadcast, C apparently commented – that’s me on the screen, including my mannerisms. 

Below : Maurice Oldfield on Left.

 

It is impossible not to quote this trivia as Guinness gets so much under the character’s skin that we ONLY see George Smiley on screen. Le Carre wrote Smiley not as a super spy or an action man but as a great intelligent spy with a weakness; his wife Ann is continuously unfaithful to him, and they live separately. Smiley, the master of all events and the counterattack on Karla, cannot “control” his wife. This makes Smiley probably one of the most human characters in the spy fiction lore. (In the film, Ann is there for just one scene while she is there in at least three episodes in the TV Series).

 

The 7 part TV Series is available on You Tube . I can assure you that this is binge-watch material.

 

The TV Series : 

Script – 5 out of 5

Story – 5 out of 5

Direction – 5 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

 

 Total – 4.8 out of 5

 

So what’s wrong with the 2011 film? Nothing much except that it is told in a straightforward fashion. I believe it suffers one of the most spectacular miscasting in recent times. Gary Oldman is a superb actor, and it is perhaps easier to remember him doing his regular carpet chewing in various crime thrillers (Remember Leon and him screaming EVERRRYYYONE  https://youtu.be/74BzSTQCl_c .  )  He plays Smiley as a clothes peg and a somewhat dull character. If anyone brings any sense of “character”, it is Tom Hardy as Tarr and Benedict Cumberbatch as ‘young’ Peter Guillam. The film also has a cameo by John le Carre in a party scene. 

 

 

John le Carre – Extreme right . In the party scene (in the film)

 

Unfortunately, the film has been withdrawn from Amazon Prime but is available on Amazon Prime worldwide. There is a “free” site with lots of pop-ups. So I would advise some caution.

https://bingewatch.to/watch-movie/watch-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-hd-18141/934926

 

 

The 2011 Film  

Script – 3 out of 5

Story – 4 out of 5

Direction – 4 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

 

 Total – 3.8 out of 5