Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (novel, miniseries, and forthcoming film to be directed by Tomas Alfredson)

love the book, love the miniseries. only problem with it is i cant remember who i lent it to.

interesting project, but i cant really imagine anyone doing better than guinness. that was a truly magnificent performance.

s1ocki otm

I have a hard time imagining that this could touch the miniseries, which was pretty much perfect.

i have a hard time imagining that i can't touch my miniseries as someone has borrowed it and i can't remember who :(

i hope this isn't a horrible travesty that makes me sad - because the original miniseries was so great.

alec guinness' performance is on another level in the miniseries, true. i think it's possible to make a good film of this and get everything into 150-160 minutes without rushing through. i have a good feeling about this one though i'm not expecting it to be a definitive take (that's already been accomplished obv.) i assume the choice of alfredson means they won't try to bourne things up too much.

Mmmf, something just occurred to me -- are they going to try and make this a period piece or are they going the contemporary route?

This could be interesting but I'd be concerned that the slow, twisty procedural of the book, which worked well on TV, mightn't transfer properly to a 2 hour movie.

the opening scene of the 70s 'tinker tailor', where the spies all sit down and smoke, not saying a word but speaking volumes, is prob my fave bit of telly ever, partly cos i used to work very near cambridge circus, seen in the very first shot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyBuUM6BRy0

Absolutely agree. One of my favourite pieces of television ever. I wonder whether the new film will also consist of an awful lot of footage of middle-aged men smoking in dingey rooms.

odd that they're redoing it, but love love love Alfredson and Morgan.

they should have done the middle book The Honourable Schoolboy instead, at least that one hasn't been taken yet :/

That one always was a little out of place, though. Don't get me wrong, it's excellent.

Yeah, I found Honorable Schoolboy to be a little odd and difficult to relate to.

Is it just me or do a disturbing number of his novels end with the protagonist just about to make it to safety when they are suddenly brutally gunned down?

Hahaha yeah

spoilers?

wonder how this is gonna work, really

but it'll be good to have gary oldman starring in a non-shit film for a change

don't count yr chickens etc

the tv show is veeeeerrrryyyy slllooooooowwww but that's part of the charm

michael bay to direct

the tv show is so insanely good

so slow and subtle

so awesome

the opening scene of the 70s 'tinker tailor', where the spies all sit down and smoke, not saying a word but speaking volumes, is prob my fave bit of telly ever, partly cos i used to work very near cambridge circus, seen in the very first shot:

― Ward Fowler, Friday, November 20, 2009 6:52 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark

otm

not mad on guinness's stuff when he was younger, tbh, but he totally shreds in this

yeah i was just thinking about watching this again. "smiley's people" is really good too.

i remember watching the tv show when i was abt 12 and liked le carré, i wanted to like it but it was too slow for me then

benedict cumberbatch hahaha just fucking cast bill nighy and make it a romantic comedy*

*[placeholder for explanation of how it already is]

wonder if they'll leave in the two female characters

i really love how the tv version kind of starts off on this note of smiley being this totally out-of-the-loop outsider who is "too old for this shit", and then he sits down with the british agents at the estate house to meet with the spy-on-the-run, and he takes off his glasses and puts them back on and gives this dude a look which says in an instant that he's the smartest and toughest dude around and it's like "oh shit."

mark strong just got cast, too. so it's him and oldman, firth, cumberbatch, hinds, ralph fiennes and tom hardy.

Holy shit. It might actually work.

Yeah, I found Honorable Schoolboy to be a little odd and difficult to relate to.

One big problem with that one was the woman character, who is as badly drawn as all Le Carre women characters (with possible exception of Connie). I do wonder sometimes whether Le Carre has ever met any actual women.

But I still totally love TTSS and SP.

he takes off his glasses and puts them back on and gives this dude a look which says in an instant that he's the smartest and toughest dude around and it's like "oh shit."

otfm

Absolutely the best moment of the whole series, I get chills just thinking about it.

not sure if this was mentioned but it's apparently retaining the cold war era for the setting.

Thank god for that.

man i gotta find my dvds of the show so i can watch it again

I have a hard time imagining that this could touch the miniseries, which was pretty much perfect.

― Moodles, Friday, November 20, 2009 11:44 AM (10 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have a hard time imagining that i can't touch my miniseries as someone has borrowed it and i can't remember who :(

― 311 is a joek (s1ocki), Friday, November 20, 2009 11:57 AM (10 months ago) Bookmark

it's always in the place where you least expect it, like the amazon marketplace page of your friend or acquaintance.

Unwittingly I've only watched the compressed, US six-episode (instead of seven) version of the series. Apparently they've even jumbled the chronology of some scenes around. Anyone seen both?

oh shit, that's the version i've seen too (via netflix).

Basically I'm going to get and watch the original no matter how trivial the differences might be. Every scene could be longer. Feels like I can still taste the words exchanged between Smiley and Prideaux in the car, at the hotel, walking around the moors.

Kathy Burke as Connie Sachs

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1322727/Kathy-Burke-star-film-version-John-le-Carr-s-Tinker-Tailor-Soldier-Spy.html

gonna be great this i can feel it. god knows how they're going to squelch it all down to 2 hours. if they can nail the Ricky Tarr bit they've got the rest i think.

tom hardy playing ricky tarr fyi

super stoked for this... killer cast

boom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2011/jun/30/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-traiker

love john hurt

holy shit i am pumped for this

Probably this is going to be good (Gary Oldman and John Hurt are great), but Smiley and Guinness for me are so inextricably linked that it is impossible to imagine a different actor in that role.

true, hope they pull it off

good to see benny cumby and tom hardy reteaming

Oldman looks the part in that trailer altho he's perhaps still too good-looking to be Smiley, also I can't quite tell from the trail if it's set in period or not, some of the shots look like it is but some don't. Anyway I'm pretty sure this will rock and I demand they do the full trilogy.

xp its one of those moments where you really buy the explanation at the end....bill just wanted to have fun, if they weren't playing for empire and glory then he was going for the solo run and what he responds to most as the all knowing surveyor of the breached circus is panache and spirit, which lord knows isnt coming from percy, bland or esterhase

A general topic on Bluesky about six months ago was the running of a good meeting, and Tom Ewing, formerly of this parish, pointed out that no-one runs a good meeting, and all of the tips are just revealing what kind of meetings arsehole everyone is. He then reposted the opening of episode 1 as "The four kinds of people you encounter in a meeting"

1. Meeting Pervert (Esterhase): Actually likes meetings, hopes to impress
2. Meeting Hater (Bland): There on sufferance, got out of bed for this, blatantly unprepared
3. Meeting Fascist (Alleline): set the agenda, pre-decided all outcomes, will kill any useful convos
4. Meeting Joker (Haydon): the lowest form of life

smiley, gwillam have any number of excellent meetings throughout

smiley's house: irascibly surprised vs coolly certain about getting what is wanted

gwillams car: meeting is not about what the meeting is about, all enjoying it

smiley's room at the guest house as barraclough: lecturing affectionately and overinstructing a cherished protege who is bearing it with grace while still picking up info of some use

control meeting prideaux obv a v excellent meeting

perhaps meetings must be two ppl only idk

etc

i have, on this watch, enjoyed the specific type of awful in Percy's overworked performance of banter in his climbing of the ladder

everyone's age is wrong, as far as casting goes, ive noticed.

paul herzberg's accent in smiley's people is... something else

(he's the guy who receives the negatives on the boat and drives a truck?)

He then reposted the opening of episode 1 as "The four kinds of people you encounter in a meeting"

1. Meeting Pervert (Esterhase): Actually likes meetings, hopes to impress
2. Meeting Hater (Bland): There on sufferance, got out of bed for this, blatantly unprepared
3. Meeting Fascist (Alleline): set the agenda, pre-decided all outcomes, will kill any useful convos
4. Meeting Joker (Haydon): the lowest form of life

lol, please dig up the link to this if you can

Sure: https://bsky.app/profile/tomewing.bsky.social/post/3lq5km4iwkc2h

TY

xps is that max?

im just getting through the audiobook section where max features in TTSS and the accent is lamentable (even tho this segement didnt make it to the screen in bbc adaptation)

this guy https://moviedude.co.uk/Paul%20Herzberg%20%20

sure george what the hell

otm; toby improved immeasurably from ttss to smiley's people

i just can't imagine being scene partner to sir alec guinness, one of the most distinguished actors of all time, and having to put on that accent

watching toby work is a pleasure in SP

bbc4 programme on now with a lecarre biography

and now michael jayston recalls his involvement with lecarre adaptations

and now

tinker tailor

thoughts on night manager season 2 yet?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/arts/television/night-manager-john-le-carre-season-two.html

Watched the first episode. Feels more Mick Herron than le Carré so far.

That's a bit of a cheap comparison really. I guess I just mean to say not as good.

i mean it’s something but it’s hardly le carré. first episode a backroom domestic spy, with a face no doubt well remembered by those who encountered him before, crashes into a double agent source’s restaurant meal. a source who at the v least is in an equivocal position and has been delicately cultivated, throws her into a cheap hotel room, leaves her there, buggers off to spain with a load of untrained civilians more or less and unsurprisingly gets them killed.

he is then rightly bollocked (in his supposed mortal absence) for this, but in a tone the programme somehow suggests is more to do with high up cover up and conspiracy. so yes - that’s pretty slow horses really but without the humour and implying incompetence isn’t actually.

tbf an awful lot of the first series tension was created by the necessity of caution and constraint, which is to a degree relevant to le carré. not exactly the delicate and anxiety ridden web of contact and source management but it worked. this is just running around blowing things up and playing tennis in exotic locations. wealth porn. it’s done well enough i suppose but it’s silly and embarrassing to watch.

quick notes on THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY (1977), bcz I did a big smiley comfort-food reread while tired and under the weather last week

actually I reread TTSS and SP p often but this was the first time since probably the mid-80s that I dived back into tHS. Mainly bcz I remembered I didn’t really like it at the time — and I was right: it’s way overlong and not that good.

1: retooling beloved characters. he kind of completely wrecks jerry westerby , who has a terrific walk-on as a sozzled circus-adjacent hack, so fond of & loyal to smiley & the circus, very much in that order. Age unclear perhaps in the book: except Joss Ackland’s TV performance is so pitch-perfect vivid that it puts a pin in him really. He’s a wounded alcoholic loser in his late 50s, maybe older even! And then tHS tries to shave years if not decades off this: attempts to james-bond him up into a boldly capable agent craftwise, except for being dangerously impassioned & heart-ruled — and plays sets him loose in SE Asia. Worse he is also suddenly POSH: viz the “honourable” has a double meaning, yes he behaves well towards people if possible but also he is literally from an aristocratic family. So (a) Joss Ackland could not possibly play him & (b) this is much too much new material. Probably the earlier character couldn’t stand anyway expansion, but such bewildering & disorientating shifts are a disappointing betrayal 😞😞😞

2: retooling beloved characters: slight return bcz ditto fawn, a minor character expanded in a v unkind direction. in TTSS fawn is primarily 1 x minor goon, small quiet & efficiently ready to thump ricki tarr when needed — mainly per guillam’s temper. However in tHS fawn is prey to constant unseemly tantrums, primarily apparently as foil to guillam’s temper (since ricki is no longer present).

3. guillam’s temper, an unparseable device both tiresome & dislikable, except perhaps as a reminder that secret service types, owls & goons alike, are brittle losers. I know he has a function (smiley’s watson) but I hate guillam (luckily he too gets retooled for SP)

4: the micro-world under JLC’s microscope is this time the hong kong hackworld, this reprobate gang of english-speaking journalists who drink & party together, some of them fixtures & some of them fly-by-nights: raffishly cynical & competitive, a boyish cross-class camaraderie that’s also self hating & unsavoury & colonial-predatory. I imagine there’s 60s & 70s fiction that sketches this same milieu in this same moment, but even if I don’t know my way round it this never really feels groundbreaking the way JLC’s melancholy & down-at-heel portrait of the british spy world does. It’s not quite an ugliness he’s revelling in (this isn’t smugly nasty amis-ism), but it does need to be present enough that westerby can convincingly cloak himself in it for professional invisibility’s sake (while all the time cherishing his inner unspoiled nobility, as spy-provocateur with a purpose secret even from himself). JLC gives generous shout-out the newsmen who helped him with his local research, indicating that some of them are more or less the real-life characters he encounter (the ancient elder craw with his distinctive — and irritating — way of speech, but also an unnamed dwarf who will in a year or two become billy kwan in the topic-related Year of Living Dangerously… )

5: hong kong the city many vividly overripe vignettes but all of them (compare his travels in Europe, from grand & fancy hotels in old geneva to his beloved shabby backstreet london) a little unsurprising & second-hand? Primarily I think bcz they’ve were short-visit gleaned via the hong kong hackworld, so the steerings he absorbed were mainly one-dimensional tired clichés. All the scurrying louche busy-ness is a veil that few on the page & no one reading are expected (by the author) to wirggle their way past…

6: a blasted & tottering phnom penh: scenes memorable bcz ACTION as cambodia falls to the khmer rouge — including a taxi ride in & back out of hell (w a young sexy photographer who doesn’t know the danger she’s in & a wisecracking young local driver who does, except he’s p much addled with nihilism. All fairly excitingly still in the moment in 1977, a freshly salutary glimpse, not yet by-the-numbers, of all we had not yet fully processed — like when they open the door on the exposed demoncore in CHERNOBYL? Except you can’t help thinking what was smiley’s line on the final helicopter out of saigon (jammed in, even with no one in the story on it) — I mean he is set up to be seen as very disapproving of america & its obnoxious war-like ways, but it’s not like he in any sense ever acts on this, stubborn non-communication notwithstanding

7: look-back circus history & future lore: pauses for judgment as a content device to steer the reader (like “Some afterwards felt that Smiley was here mistaken in his actions…” inc. implication that they were wrong to feel this). now tbf these are also all over TTSS and SP — but those books are shorter (so the volume of such steering is way less exhausting) & since they’re largely set in europe the underlying ideological war presents more as bi- than triform, as West vs East aka Thoughtful Boss George vs Ruthless Boss Karla, rather than USA battles UK re how to interfere & fuck with (and up) S.E.Asia, which is the real-world geometry and the dynamic underpinning tHS, all circling round some highly under-rendered chinese guys battling to make their way in the world (and here I’d say hence the final helicopter out of saigon but of course the vietnamese & the chinese weren’t really on the same side, and nor were vietnam & khmer rouge cambodia. two modes of capitalist colonials vs at least three) modes of liberation communism? I mean fine why not, but smiley’s office wars with saul endicott doesn’t map anything so multipolar…

leftover phrase I cut from the above and wanted to put back in but couldn’t work out where was best: “bogus & questionable”

you hate guillam always, or which version or portrayal of him?

ths greatest sin is jaystons accents when reading the audiobook, it made me wish i had been listening (for i immediately stopped) to it on tape so that i had something physical to punish

Overlong, not that good, too much boys own stuff without enough cynical distance, this is how I remember the book too

in TTSS (book & TV) and in tHS; he's fine in SP (both forms), marriage clearly suits & calms him

to be fair my post is also possibly overlong 😃😇

The colonial/post colonial hackworld is a well worn trope - James Clavell’s noble house does it better and does Hong Kong better ( with a lot more sexism and his own particular brand of orientalism/racism that portrays all Chinese as sex crazed ayn randian capitalist uber mensch).

Oriental hackworld even gets a look in in Patrick O’Brien where he picks up four red faced, sizzled colonial functionaries who are portrayed as people who will eat anything, drink anything but are otherwise useless other then to give standing to his majesties plenipotentiary with an Malay potentate. They get sent off in an open boat with a treaty after the ship run aground and they die in a hurricane.

But yes, 70s/80s seems to be a highpoint of this drunken relics of empire trope.

Do we have a James Clavell thread or even a 70s/80s doorstop fiction thread.

I watched the first three episode of the shogun series on a couple of Cathay Pacific flights form Melbourne to Osaka via Hong Kong and I reread Shogun recently, so he’s been on my mind.

Do we have a James Clavell thread or even a 70s/80s doorstop fiction thread.

I watched the first three episode of the shogun series on a couple of Cathay Pacific flights form Melbourne to Osaka via Hong Kong and I reread Shogun recently, so he’s been on my mind.

both barrels

I watched the original Richard Chamberlain version of Shogun but somehow never got round to reading Clavell. I did read James Mitchener's Centennial tho thanks to another epic 70s TV adaptation

Are any of these guys actually good? It’s funny how as a kid, I would see these enormous novels that just screamed EPIC to me, more ambitious appearing than the Clancy/Grisham/Ludlum stuff, you can include John Jakes and others in there as well. I had the youthful tendency to assume 800+ pages meant “smart” fiction, which is how I wound up reading Battlefield Earth as a 12 yr old haha. Anyway I assume none hold a candle to JLC.

i'm in the middle of honourable schoolboy right now, it's definitely been a bit of a slog. i enjoy the smiley scenes. i agree that westerby's scenes are pretty much unreadable, i skim and skip. as someone who lived in hong kong for a couple of years i really enjoy the geography of the city as laid out in the novel. i don't have any idea about the veracity of the characters themselves, though, having not been alive in 1965 or whenever the story's supposed to take place. i imagine it's similar in depth to 'the world of suzie wong' which i've never seen or read but just feels like it drew from the same well, yeah?

my library has informed me that i've had honourable schoolboy out for so long that it's considered to be lost. i have been fined $20, which is a little less than halfway to the threshold of $50 in fees above which i will not be able to borrow. i hope to finish the book before the end of the summer so that i can clear my name but boy jerry westerby does not make for easy reading.

it's taking place in 1975 fwiw

i liked the ascension of smiley into a being similar to control or god somewhat, you hear more of what is thought of what he says and does and doesnt than you read from his perspective and its a pleasing aspect to maybe a full third of the book as i remember it

James Clavel is a very good story teller and his books are definitely rewarding. He’s very good at spinning these very complex multi-threaded yarns; possibly too many threads at time)

There’s a lot of detail, clearly a lot of research; he was screenwriter as well and what might be a couple of seconds of establishing shot becomes five pages, he can also get a bit repetitive on points he really wants to hammer home.

On the downside - the sexism, the orientalism, albeit tempered with there always being a white saviour who embodies or learns his basic idea that ideal humans are base maximizers of profit and pleasure by adopting ‘oriental ways’.

His grasp of Asian languages is shocking and there’s a few major historical clangers - the social attitudes depicted in Shigun mainly belong to an era 50-100 hears after the one in which it is set.

Even with all those caveats - have read all of them and would read again.

Noble House (1981) is interesting in that Clavell clearly read the Karla trilogy. There’s a couple of characters that seem lifted straight from JLC. The whole espionage subplot (or is it two?), feels a bit cut and shut into the main narrative, you could probably loose it without too much impact on the rest of the book.

bbc casting a legacy of spies at present

a 70s/80s doorstop fiction thread

I love this thread idea, especially if we include 60s fiction. According to Davis' Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America, the first press that could produce two-inch-thick mass market paperbacks went into operation in 1961. Soon after that, brick-shaped paperback novels started to sell in much larger numbers than hardcover editions. By the 90s, trade paperbacks ate into the rack-sized book market and the golden era of doorstop fiction came to an end.

irrc, the godfather was near the zenith of the 2" thick mass market paperback era

We may not have a thread about it all per se but we've got a couple of author threads (which I started):

James Michener

Herman Wouk

None specifically on Clavell, I think.

Although I did start this one about the original miniseries and the book:

"Shogun" -- the miniseries (but the book too if you like)

by the by... r0ger t00ze just posted a link to the pilot episode of "Mr Palfrey of Westminster" (1983). had never heard of it before!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h4q0qVCvTM

https://i.postimg.cc/QMXQPXYB/ttss.jpg