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

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.

it's set in ~the past~ for deffo

'it's the male bridesmaids' - a blogger who gets it

every shot looks period to me

yeah consider me stoked. looks like exactly the right tone. still hard to get my head around a non Guinness/BBC version but hey.

Definitely could work, the brief bit of the Karla interrogation scene was solid.

oldman doing his best obi-wan impression

its still set in the 1970s according to wikipedia

i just rescreened this the other week and it put me on a le carre book/movie/miniseries kick. the miniseries for a perfect spy is kinda 'eh' (though i dont love the novel as much as everyone else does); smiley's people is pretty good but not as good as this.

sick trailer btw

pretty stoked for this based on the trailer, never seen or read any le carré.

i pretty much love anything with spies and the cold war.

dude!!

excited for this!

so many craggy-looking british dudes!

new board description

haha. oldman is so good. has he really never won an oscar?

'oscar' and 'good at acting' are pretty bad predictors of ea. other

yeah, i know. just the "gary oldman BAFTA winner - colin firth academy award winner" thing at the end struck me as wrong.

Psyched for this even though it can't possibly improve upon the mini-series.

yeah, just the condensing of everything to feature length makes me nervous. but looks like they nailed the vibe, judging from the trailer.

"I want to tell you a story..."

The meeting with Guillaum, it’s just a beautiful bit of set up. He’s on the phone with Mendel, who knows that he overplayed it a bit, smiley makes a mention of his troubled state of mind after losing his agents on a previous mission, so we are primed for him to break when he’s pulled in by Esterhase. And just how he’s approached by each of the four possible moles in this meeting. Bill’s easy humor only slightly covering his watchfulness, reading for signs. Richardson is perfect in this part. And ultimately Guillaum more than ably covering his uncertainty with rebellious disrespect and zings which are very appreciated by Bill, who seemingly buys what he’s selling in the end. And in retrospect, it is a bit of a life or death moment for young Peter.

bbc4 showing this at xmas so I'll no doubt watch it again.

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.