Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 1979 seven-part drama spy mini-series made by the BBC. Directed by John Irvin, and produced by Jonathan Powell, it is a television adaptation of the 1974 novel of the same name by John le Carré. The mini-series, which stars Alec Guinness, Michael Jayston, Anthony Bate, George Sewell, and Michael Aldridge, was shown in the United Kingdom from 10 September to 22 October 1979 and in the United States over a year later beginning on 29 September 1980.

The main title credits feature a matryoshka doll progressively revealing a doll looking more irate than the previous, with the final doll being faceless, an allusion to Winston Churchill's describing Russia as "A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Analogously, the literary George Smiley concludes that only Karla saw the last doll in the British traitor.

In the US, syndicated broadcasts and DVD releases compressed the seven-part UK episodes into six, by shortening scenes and altering the narrative sequence. In the UK original, Smiley visits Connie Sachs before Peter Guillam's burglary of the Circus, while the US version reverses the sequence of these events, in line with the time sequence of the novel.



^ Floyd, Nigel (15 September 2011). "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Review". IGN. Retrieved 12 September 2012.

^ Fletcher, Brett (17 November 2011). "Tinker, Tailor, Soldir, Spy (1979 BBC Miniseries) | Review". GotchaMovies. Retrieved 12 September 2012.

Synopsis

George Smiley (Guinness), deputy head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, is forced into retirement in the wake of "Operation Testify", a failed spy mission to Czechoslovakia. Veteran British agent Jim Prideaux (Bannen) had been sent to meet with a Czech general he's been told has information identifying a deep-cover Soviet spy planted in the highest echelons of British Secret Intelligence Service, known as the Circus because of its headquarters at Cambridge Circus in London.

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