Many of the bestselling spy novels by John le Carré have made popular fodder for film and television adaptations over the years, some more successfully than others. Often regarded among the best of them is the 1979 BBC miniseries version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Even four decades later, the show maintains a reputation as one of the greatest works of espionage fiction made for the small screen.
That the novel is widely regarded as one of le Carré’s best certainly plays a part in that. The added length of the miniseries format also had an advantage in being able to retain much more of the book’s plotting than a compressed feature film could. The show’s chief asset, however, is a terrifically entertaining performance by Sir Alec Guinness as le Carré’s favorite recurring character, British spymaster George Smiley. Even the author himself, sometimes hard to please about such matters, praised the star and the series for capturing his work so well.
| Title: | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy |
| Season: | 1 |
| Number of Episodes: | 7 |
| Release Date: | Sept. 10 – Oct. 22, 1979 (UK) |
| Watched On: | Blu-ray |
Based on the book first published in 1974, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a Cold War tale centered at The Circus, le Carré’s fictionalized version of the British MI6 intelligence service. As rumors begin to circulate that the Russian KGB may have embedded a mole within the agency, the cantankerous chief known only as Control (Alexander Knox) narrows down a shortlist of five high-ranking senior officials. Among them is his own right-hand man, George Smiley. Regrettably, when Control sends an agent to obtain intel that might identify the traitor, the mission ends in failure and scandal.
Within half a year, Control is dead from a heart attack. Smiley, forced into retirement, is approached by a government minister who asks him to return to duty in order to complete the task that Control couldn’t. Working quietly but methodically, Smiley sets about investigating the remaining four suspects to suss out which of them has been compromised. All of them had the means and opportunity to betray their country, but could any of them have actually done it, and if so, why?
The TV adaptation of this story was directed by John Irvin, a former documentarian who had transitioned to a successful career in British television and would later go on to mixed results in feature films. (His Vietnam War drama Hamburger Hill met some acclaim, but the action flicks Raw Deal and Next of Kin were both duds for respective stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Patrick Swayze.) Scripting duties fell to Arthur Hopcraft, who had worked with Irvin on previous productions of his own play The Nearly Man and Charles Dickens’ Hard Times.
Viewed in retrospect, their version of Tinker Tailor takes what now seems like a rather old-fashioned approach to adapting a novel into a TV miniseries – i.e. transcribe as much of the original text as is practical directly into the screenplay and film it with as much professionalism and as little ostentation as may be necessary. Stylistically, this isn’t a particularly flashy thriller. The pacing is rather slow and deliberate, and the series retains storylines from the book that probably could have been streamlined out without losing much critical.
Even that being the case, the show is never less than compelling. The narrative by le Carré is rich and multi-layered, and the performances are all exemplary. Guinness of course gets most of the attention, and deservedly so. However, also keep an eye out in the later episodes for a young Patrick Stewart as the Russian spy known as Karla.
The story’s ending is perhaps a little anticlimactic, but that’s not much of a complaint. This adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is still an engrossing tale, well told.
The Blu-ray
The 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was released on Blu-ray in the United States by Acorn Media back in 2012. Unfortunately, that two-disc set has a number of deficiencies that make it undesirable. Chief among them is the fact that it contains only the American broadcast version of the miniseries. As originally aired on the BBC, the series was comprised of seven episodes. However, during syndication for the American market, the show was re-edited and consolidated into only six episodes. Although Wikipedia claims that “the overall running time is about the same,” I haven’t found another source to corroborate that, and the difference in running speed between NTSC and PAL broadcast muddies the waters a bit. Short of watching both versions in full for a comparison (which would be of limited interest to me), I’m not sure how much footage was removed, and am inclined to prefer the original British version.
Equally problematic is that the video master Acorn used for its Blu-ray edition is antiquated and looks terrible. Encoded in interlaced 1080i high definition, the 4:3 picture is extremely soft and blurry, with muddy colors and a considerable amount of dirt and damage on the source elements. Although I may believe that it comes from a true high-def master (not upconverted from standard definition), it’s a very old one and appears to be sourced from a sub-optimal print.
Thankfully, a better option exists. After watching the first couple episodes from the Acorn disc, I did some searching and discovered that BBC Video remastered the series (in its original seven-episode form) in 2019 for a Blu-ray release in the UK. I promptly set aside the Acorn copy and ordered the UK version from a seller on Amazon.
Note that these UK Blu-rays are locked to Region B, and further are encoded in 1080i format at 50Hz playback speed (as opposed to the 60Hz or 24fps standards used in America). Watching will require an appropriate region -free player and/or a display compatible with a 50Hz signal. Neither of these were issues for me.
Keeping in mind that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was photographed on 16mm film for an intended broadcast in standard-definition resolution, the BBC Blu-ray looks significantly better than the Acorn version. The image is decidedly sharper and clearer, transferred from a source in much better condition. I can’t find any transfer notes on it, but wouldn’t be surprised if BBC did a new scan of the original camera negative. That at least one episode is missing a piece of on-screen text (“Six Months Later”) that was replaced with player-generated subtitles at the bottom of the screen might support this, assuming the optical used for that text didn’t make its way into the negative.
Even that being the case, the picture is still fairly soft by HD standards most of the time, and frequently very grainy. The show’s modest budget and source photography will forever be limitations a viewer must accept.
The BBC edition also appears to have been mastered at too blue of a white balance, which leaves colors looking flattened and flesh tones pallid, even bleached. This may be disappointing, but I’ll still take it over the murky Acorn transfer any day. I’ll also add that the problem looks much worse in screencaps on my computer monitor than when I play the disc on my home theater projector.
As mentioned, BBC authored the discs at a 50Hz frame rate even though, from what I can tell, the show was most likely shot at a standard 24fps. To be fair, that’s consistent with how it was originally broadcast in PAL video territories. Nevertheless, playback is slightly sped-up. The difference is subtle, but those sensitive to it will pick up on an occasional video-ish look during movement.
Again, all things considered, this is still the superior Blu-ray.
The soundtrack is encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono format, and has been pitch corrected to account for the speed-up. The audio sounds fine for a TV show from 1979. Dialogue is clear, sometimes too much so, as scenes where lines were “looped” in ADR often stand out. Alec Guinness’ mellifluous voice comes through nicely. The sound of film running through the camera is even audible in some close-ups. The mix has very limited dynamics, with extremely weak gunshots and explosions – not that the show has many of either. It’s perfectly adequate so long as you can keep your expectations in check.
The only extra on the Blu-ray is an hour-long 2000 BBC documentary about John le Carré called The Secret Centre, which was also previously included on the Criterion Blu-ray edition of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Acorn didn’t do much better in this regard, but that release did have a few minutes of deleted scenes (seemingly all footage cut from the British version), a different half-hour interview with le Carré, an interview with director John Irvin, and (most usefully) a booklet with a printed glossary to help keep track of the characters and espionage jargon. Since I have it, I’m inclined to put that booklet with the BBC set.
Following the standalone Blu-ray release in 2019, BBC Video later reissued Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in 2021 as part of a four-disc set bundled with the 1982 sequel series Smiley’s People. That’s the version I bought.
The Video File Blog 
Completely filmed on 16mm? Funny! I thought the BBC only did that for exterior scenes (see ‘Fawlty Towers’) which always gave way for a noticeably difference/contrast with the interior scenes.
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This was a prestige production. They spent the medium bucks on this one.
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