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

i like richardson's weird broke-neck wriggle, even though it's totally unconvincing -- it sort of suits the stupid squalor of the situation (including the fact that the air and the charm go out of the character like a leaky balloon when he stops being an actor on a stage)

Ok I really don’t really remember the broke neck wriggle. Have to rewatch.

binged little drummer girl over three nights and thought it was good

the absence of actual british government agents until the last act made the one representative character take on an air of imperial cynicism that you miss out in some of the other le carre adaptations because everything's coated in that cynicism from the get-go

Ricki Tarr, one of fiction’s great dirtbags

Why did Alfredson's The Snowman get such terrible reviews? I thought it was okay--standard serial-killer stuff that at least looked good and maintained a kind of desolate mood.

(Val Kilmer's pretty bad, I should add--and almost unrecognizable at first.)

According to le Carré, The Ink Factory now plans to do new television adaptations of all the novels featuring Cold War spy George Smiley — this time in chronological order. “That means that if you actually go back to the first big conspiracies in ‘The Spy Who Came In From the Cold’ you’ve got to consider how Smiley ages and how young he was at that time,” le Carré says. That would mean finding an actor who can play younger than the Smiley incarnated by Gary Oldman in the film version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” Le Carré says that his sons are interested in casting the British actor Jared Harris, whose performance they all admired in the recent TV mini-series “Chernobyl.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/books/john-le-carre-agent-running-in-the-field.html

Shit, Harris would be a really good pick

Yeah I'd be down for sure.

omg yes plz

Understandable if interesting that he mentions Cold since a full series sweep would have to start with Call For the Dead.

tbh if you're really gonna do this why not cast multiple actors a la The Crown

Understandable if interesting that he mentions /Cold/ since a full series sweep would have to start with /Call For the Dead/.

tbh if you're really gonna do this why not cast multiple actors a la The Crown

geraldine mcewan as the smiley in a murder of quality plz

she's only a bit dead

tought to improve on Spy Who Came In From the Cold film

just as the TTSS movie did nothing. noooooothing.

Just read The Traitor and the Spy. I’m told this is about as good as non fiction about espionage gets, and it was good! (but still nowhere near TTSS).

i just got gifted that last week! cant wait to read

I’ve probably already said this but Spy / Counterspy is tremendous and while almost certainly not completely true it’s totally gripping and “non-fiction” in a, uh broader sense.

The Deadly Affair is unfortunately fairly weak. Don't bother with it.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Monday, 15 August 2011 20:27 (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is fair advice

some nice supporting turns but they absolutely butchered smiley/anne and shouldve really left that whole strand out

Currently listening to the audiobook of a perfect spy, read fantastically by David jayston (Peter Guillam from the tv series)

Oh I forgot to update

I finished The Traitor & The Spy and it was remarkable. I had to keep reminding myself that it was true, it was so unbelievably tense and (sometimes completely absurd!) it truly felt like a novel. Incredible stuff, highly HIGHLY recommend.

Truly a ripping yarn!

not read it but when it was book of the week on R4 a couple of years it caught my attention, because normally their books of the week are quite dull and this was not!

years back

As great as was, I was even more spellbound by, earlier Kim Philby book.

Ben Macintyre's true spy storytelling is better than almost any spy fiction. Right up there with The Traitor & The Spy, I'd recommend his Kim Philby book, A Spy Among Friends and Double Cross: the True Story of D-Day Spies.

As great as was, I was even more spellbound by, earlier Kim Philby book.

If you can find a copy (it's probably out of print), I really recommend Take Nine Spies by Fitzroy Maclean. It's got a great chapter about Kim Philby and another really good one about Operation Mincemeat.

Michael Jayston I think you mean, who I am delighted to see is still alive.

the Donald Maclean book, A Spy Named Orphan is a not bad read. Not much tension in it though, because the British establishment was so numb-brained back then about their posho diplomats that if "one of theirs" got shitfaced on vodka and started singing The Internationale and drunkenly telling anyone in earshot that they are a traitor, it still wouldn't be enough to arouse suspicion. whereas Gordievsky had an absolutely sadistic, switched on, paranoid evil bastard, possessed with low cunning type boss who was suspicious of all his underlings, so he is on much less borrowed time.

xp no i meant david jason ha

i was staggered when i looked up the reader. he must be 1000 years old but it's an incredibly spry performance! tons of accents. can you imagine your reaction as a audiobook reader when the author creates a character originally from france with a bronx accent? admittedly the american accents aren't great, but he sounds about 50.

he's 84!

looks like he's recorded lots of le carre audiobooks

He has got an excellent voice.

A Perfect Spy is a perfect book. (I read it just before lockdown, so it might be improved in memory).

watched the bbc miniseries a couple months ago and it was great and also amazing how much ~space~ there was. any recent adaptation would ratchet up the tension so much more, e.g. guillam would have had to sweat much harder when lifting documents from the circus, tarr would have been shot at, etc.

also a couple of smiley's antagonists are such *exquisite* assholes, notably alleline and (from the first episode) roddy martindale. esterhase wasn't quite up to snuff imo. and while i'll admit it's a tough role, tarr's russian girlfriend was wholly unconvincing as a legit source of information.

the string quartet ruled

Listening to the perfect spy scene in which brotherhood interviews an eccentric old catholic while surrounded by his grandchildren and wearing a “disgraceful” pullover. I’m in heaven.

did we talk about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bureau_(TV_series) anywhere?

Maybe. Should I binge watch this rather than going outside and enjoying the rest of summer?

i don't know! i want to know if it's any good.

I've binged all of those The Bureau seasons. It's somehow a huge phenomenon and casual mainstream reference point over here (in Norway).

I have actually made the "Tinker" comparison while talking about it before. There's not as much nostalgic pathos in the conversations, perhaps, but like Tinker it's brilliant at making thrilling television out of office work and careful smoking out of spies, mules and state secrets. It takes the spy work extremely seriously but it's still got plenty of larger than life characters. As a TV thriller it's one of the best.

agreed. it’s tremendous. kassowitz is incredible but you’ve got other absolute giants of cinema in there too. and the operations, and the centrality of the middle east, are (from what i understand) based on very detailed research.

Similar vein, is the 2007 adaptation of Robert Littel's 'The Company' any good?

looks like he's recorded lots of le carre audiobooks

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, June 24, 2020 5:44 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

He has got an excellent voice.

― Future England Captain (Tom D.), Wednesday, June 24, 2020 6:00 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

now listening to jayston's TTSS. flawless performance.

Watched episode one last night and every second guinness is on screen is incredible

It may require a post idk

yes and yes.

also thanks for the recommendation of the bureau itt. it’s not ttss but i’m very much enjoying it which is more than i can say about anything else on television.

yw! i'm still sitting on the most recent season like a bottle of wine you don't want to drink yet.