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

gr8 post m8

I hastily abandoned the BBC radio production of Smiley's People after 5 minutes because as much as I admire Simon Russell Beale as a very fine actor, his voice just isn't right as George Smiley. But maybe I'll return to it another time.

the foley for wiping your glasses with your tie is rubbish tbf

from elsewhere:

One of my professors was the student of the don at Oxford who recruited John le Carré into MI6. I love le Carré's books so I was really intrigued by this, and asked him if he ever got recruited to MI6.

To my surprise, he said yes. But it was done in a very le Carré-esque style. My professor had an interview with MI6 which he thought he bombed, and then didn't hear back from them, confirming his assumption... until he got a completely out-of-the blue job offer from an obscure UK government agency that involved lots of travel to Norwegian fisheries. He told me with a smile that it wasn't until he turned down the offer that he realized that he had gotten the MI6 gig, but he failed the final test!

Shortly before filming began, Alec Guinness asked author John le Carré to introduce him to a real spy to aid him in preparing for his role. Le Carré invited Guinness to lunch with Sir Maurice Oldfield, who served as Chief of the British Intelligence Service from 1973 to 1978. During their meal, Guinness intently studied Oldfield for any mannerisms or quirks that he could use in his performance. When he saw Oldfield run his finger around the rim of his wine glass, he asked whether Oldfield was checking for poison—much to Oldfield's astonishment, as he was only checking how clean the glass was.

there's that great scene in TTSS where Guinness/Smiley asks the waiter to allow the wine to chambre rather than pouring it immediately, I can't remember whether he also examines the glass though?

he does not. but the nuances of expression and gesture eg when smiley tastes the wine, or guillam irritably tells the waiter to just leave it there, are perfect in that scene as elsewhere.

"sir this is a wimpy's'"

grudging lol

Brian Cox is dependably great in the gripping radio play of The Spy Who Needed Some Lemsip.. but although he is barely in it so far I still can't accept SRB as the voice of George Smiley was a good choice.

alec guiness slyly looking actual real spy maurice oldfield up and down and thinking "well i can do better than THAT"

playing smiley from now on forever is going to be mimicking guinness and claiming you didn't

Bernard Hepton (who was from Bradford) does an excellent job of the voice at least.

feel like 'love to ann!' should have become a meme

otm

I love Hywell Bennett (may he RIP) but his Australian accent = gasface

he was supposed to be strayan in this? no clue

he was faking as an aussie when he first got in w boris’s wife in ep2 but he dropped it pretty quick

Is he Australian in the show? In the book he’s from all over, mostly Singapore iirc, and he pretends to be Australian to seduce Irina.

thats how he is in the show too

watched the 7 ep original version for the first time this week. has been too long for me to identify what is excised in the 6 episode version but it definitely feels less elliptical

How does one see this longer version?

I sailed the high seas of internet piracy

I had actually hoped/expected it to be on britbox - which I watch constantly now like a damn "expat" - but alas it wasn't (in Canada at least)

I can't understand the point of shitbox if it isn't streaming the best stuff.

iirc shitbox version in the UK is the seven episode version. interesting if they’re showing different versions in different markets.

no smiley’s people tho which i recall being indifferent to but deems’ commentary made me want to go back to it.

Now we havent watched it since but its not been a week that leaves us attentive come shutting the laptops off at ....uh.....4pm

How does one see this longer version?

BBC finally released it as a Bluray last year. Previously only the 6 episode US version was available on Bluray, and the original UK version only on DVD.

dont want johnny foreigner knowing our deep spy secrets, is why

I'm rereading my way through the early lecarre novels. Well listening in fact Michael Jayston does a great job of capturing LeCarre's litery voice and sense of gloom, and does the decent thing by making sure that George Smiley sounds like Alec Guinness. Also appreciating the maturing in ending from the Detective style summing up in Call for the Dead to the brutal hard cut in The Spy Who Came in from the cold.

One episode to go of the BBC series. I mean, it's magnificent. Of so many standout setpiece conversations, the one with Ian Bannen might be the best - for tension, suppressed rage, the silences that speak of the horror of his confinement and torture. The oily Patrick Stewart was a surprise!

I started A Perfect Spy a couple days ago. Perhaps too ambitious.

An OK Spy

The Spy Who Came In ... is one where I've seen the alltime classic Richard Burton movie umpteen times and know exactly where it is going but still was gripped by the BBC radio adaptation with the good Brian Cox, almost like I thought it might all go to plan and end happily this time!

Finished the TTSS mini-series last night. Not much to add apart from more praise. One thing -not a misstep as such, just took me out of the action a bit: why did they decide on Prideaux going for the Miss Piggy option instead of shooting Haydon (as per the book)?

why did they decide on Prideaux going for the Miss Piggy option

rofl

never read the book but i assume he shoots him from afar? i'd guess it was a bright idea to give them a final little dramatic moment, and therefore needed P to kill H in some quiet way that wouldnt alert the nearby guards. but yeah the death chop is a bit silly, feel like they could have written their way around that with a minute's more thought.

I think I preferred the 'creeping in the shadows' ending of the book. It makes Smiley's revenge more poetic, somehow. But yes, I'm sure that final conversation was about wanting to definitively tie-up the loose ends.

no, in the book there is a direct parallel between how he breaks the owl’s neck and haydon’s.

actually just checked and it’s not clear how he dies, i think? the analogy is perhaps misleading tho it’s an obvious connection.

rofl

― Babby's Yed Revisited (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, 22 December 2020 19:10 (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

rofd

Should I have done spoilers? I should. SPOILER for a couple of posts back!

the problem with that scene is less the chop and more haydon's stop-tickling-me deathwriggle

He doesn’t shoot him in the book. He shoots him in the movie.

I suppose ol' Johnny Le couldn't help

tinkering with it

Moved through a very enjoyable toby/connie/hamburg episode of SP this eve

Rattling along.

mark s, your liveblog of the novel upthread is tremendous!

Just reread TTSS and have to acknowledge that a lot of its appeal to me is that it feels thick with anthropological detail...there are entire sentences I can’t quite parse. It’s a straight line from being fascinated/confused by the Yorkshire dialect in The Secret Garden when I was a kid to wondering why it’s an insult to Roy Bland to say he’s a “redbrick don” in TTSS...my life in anglophilia!

no one responded to my complaint about this at the time, but I am still annoyed that Gary Oldman is too thin to be Smiley.

Allow me to remedy that now, and too stylish besides

Finished SP in a three episode run last night

Nowhere near as rich as TTSS, but fair to lay that at the source material. We are never again given consistent access to Smiley once he ascends in THS and notwithstanding that he has become legend through the eyes and mouths of those we see and hear of him through from then on it either doesnt lend itself in the same way to Guinness layering his performance or possibly to my discerning (or inventing) such layering.

The temptation is to treat it as a rehash of key dynamics of the former but that wouldn't be fair either. Smiley is not, this time, waiting ready to pounce when the call comes, is not seeking to reclaim the circus nor to repair it and is far less cautious, detached, professional in his pursuit.

That said, and while it does miss the shabbiness imo, there's still plenty to like in the rather more simple (certainly more exposition-heavy) story, performances are on the whole still excellent, spycraft is engaged satisfactorily throughout and zipping around Paris/Hamburg/Berne/Berlin is a very fine way to do Smiley (and Toby!) on tour.

Well worth the rewatch, I'd say.

Have the seven part downloaded, but not updating to my plex library ffs