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IMDbPro

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

  • TV Mini Series
  • 19791979
  • TV-14TV-14
  • 4h 50m
IMDb RATING
8.5/10
8.9K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
2,531
93
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Tinker Tailor
Play trailer1:17
10 Videos
99+ Photos
DramaMysteryThriller
In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced out of semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6's echelons.In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced out of semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6's echelons.In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced out of semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6's echelons.
IMDb RATING
8.5/10
8.9K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
2,531
93
  • Stars
    • Alec Guinness
    • Michael Jayston
    • Anthony Bate
  • Stars
    • Alec Guinness
    • Michael Jayston
    • Anthony Bate
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 105User reviews
    • 20Critic reviews
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy

    Episodes7

    Browse episodes
    TopTop-rated
    1 Season
    1979

    Videos10

    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    Clip 0:52
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Tinker Tailor
    Trailer 1:17
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Tinker Tailor
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: How It All Fits Together
    Trailer 1:05
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: How It All Fits Together
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Smiley Sets A Trap
    Trailer 1:10
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Smiley Sets A Trap
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Smiley Tracks The Mole
    Trailer 1:06
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Smiley Tracks The Mole
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy-Disc 2
    Trailer 0:48
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy-Disc 2
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy-Disc 1
    Trailer 0:52
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy-Disc 1
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Return To The Circus
    Trailer 1:03
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Return To The Circus
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Tarr Tells His Story
    Trailer 1:02
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Tarr Tells His Story
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy-Disc 3
    Trailer 0:49
    Watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy-Disc 3

    Photos103

    Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Warren Clarke in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Alec Guinness and Ian Richardson in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Siân Phillips in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Siân Phillips in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
    Alec Sabin in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Alec Guinness
    Alec Guinness
    • George Smiley
    Michael Jayston
    Michael Jayston
    • Peter Guillam
    Anthony Bate
    Anthony Bate
    • Sir Oliver Lacon…
    George Sewell
    George Sewell
    • Mendel
    Bernard Hepton
    Bernard Hepton
    • Toby Esterhase
    Ian Richardson
    Ian Richardson
    • Bill Haydon
    Hywel Bennett
    Hywel Bennett
    • Ricki Tarr
    Terence Rigby
    Terence Rigby
    • Roy Bland
    Ian Bannen
    Ian Bannen
    • Jim Prideaux
    Michael Aldridge
    Michael Aldridge
    • Percy Alleline
    Alec Sabin
    • Fawn
    Alexander Knox
    Alexander Knox
    • Control
    Duncan Jones
    • Roach
    Daniel Beecher
    • Spikely
    Beryl Reid
    Beryl Reid
    • Connie Sachs
    John Wells
    • Headmaster
    Frank Compton
    • Bryant
    Frank Moorey
    • Lauda Strickland
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    More like this

    Smiley's People
    8.5
    Smiley's People
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    7.0
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
    7.6
    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
    A Perfect Spy
    7.4
    A Perfect Spy
    Smiley's People
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    House of Cards
    8.5
    House of Cards
    An Evening with George Smiley
    7.4
    An Evening with George Smiley
    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
    The Ipcress File
    7.2
    The Ipcress File
    A Murder of Quality
    6.3
    A Murder of Quality
    Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      John le Carré was so impressed by Alec Guinness's performance as George Smiley that, in later novels, he wrote Smiley's characterization to be in keeping with Guinness' performance.
    • Quotes

      Roy Bland: It isn't ordinary flight information, Peter. The source is very private.

      Toby Esterhase: Ultra, ultra sensitive in fact.

      Peter Guillam: In that case, Toby, I'll try and keep my mouth ultra, ultra shut.

      [Bill Haydon chuckles]

    • Crazy credits
      The opening titles show a set of Russian matryoshka dolls. One doll opens up to reveal a doll more irate than the other one, and the final doll is seen as being faceless. This was inspired by a line at the end of the "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" novel describing the mole: "Smiley settled on a picture of one of those little Russian dolls that open up to reveal one inside the other, and another inside him. Of all men living, only Karla had seen the last little doll inside..."
    • Alternate versions
      The American DVD edition is a syndicated edit comprised of six episodes instead of seven.
    • Connections
      Featured in The 33rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (1981)
    • Soundtracks
      Nunc Dimittis
      Composed by Geoffrey Burgon

      Sung by Paul Phoenix and the Boys of the St Paul's Cathedral Choir

    User reviews105

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    9/10
    A stunning argument for TV drama.
    Although not as sympathetic or achingly romantic as 'The Russia House', this stunning TV adaptation is the closest the screen has gotten to the singular world of John le Carre. Very few writers actually become so synonymous with their age that we look to their works to find out what a period of history was like. When we think of the Cold War, and, most especially, the shabby bureaucracy of British espionage, it is le Carre we think of.

    What le Carre shares with Graham Greene, making him a million miles from the priapic fantasies of James Bond, is in showing how the Cold War literally degraded everyone. Fils like 'Ninotchka' like to show the massive disparity between the dour, repressive, monotonous Soviet Union and the glitteringly superficial, gaily materialist West. Le Carre suggests that both sides of the Iron Curtain are merely of the same coin, at the executive level at least. You expect to see 1980 Czechoslovakia as a run-down, provincial dump; but this film's England reminded me of Svankmajer's 'Alice', as it details a society, a system, an ethic, a code grinding towards inertia, a world becoming increasingly closed in that it can only be jabbed into life by shocks of betrayal.

    This England is a pure mirror image of our stereotypes of the East - a system run by chilling, amoral men with perfect manners (the most frightening thing about the narrative is that any one of the suspects could have done it, each one has so lost any kind of basic humanity, never mind idealism, that it is almost irrelevant who the traitor is) gathering together in anonymous meeting rooms, or an endless rondelay of joyless dinners; a world of cramped, impersonal decor, generally sucked in by shadows, so that we can't even be sure it's men we see, or the flickering grin of the Cheshire Cat; a world of men, where one of the three female characters is an absent joke until the last five minutes, another is tortured and murdered by her superiors, and the third is sacked for competence, reduced to scraping money from grinds, a paralysed, blubbing outcast; a drab world where all colour and life has been seeped out, or goes by unnoticed, where jokes are bitter and grim, where the (very Soviet) elevator disrepair signals a wider, fundamental malaise.

    If it's fun you want, get 'You Only Live Twice' - the action here is generated from its milieu - dank, meticulous, pedantic, slow, inexorable, unsensational. This is where a 6 hour TV adaptation has the edge on a feature film - cramming a le Carre plot into the latter can make it seem rushed and exciting; this film brings out all its civil-service ingloriousness superbly (although the figure of Karla is a little too SMERSHy for my tastes).

    Bill Hayden says you can tell the soul of a nation from its intelligence service, and this film, despite the go-getting yuppie 80s or the success of heritage TV ('Jewel in the Crown', 'Brideshead Revisited') is perhaps the closest representation of a kind of soul, public school, Oxbridge, Whitehall, male. In equating this world with impotence and sterility (Smiley is childless), the material errs in equating homosexuality as the ultimate, literal inversion, a closing in, of minds, spirit etc.

    But the metaphor of the betrayed friendship as representative of a wider betrayal is less a corny contrivance than an indication of how fundamentally incestuous this world is. These men slipping in and out of shadows are ghosts, fighting a war that doesn't exist, nitpicking over irrelevant ideological puzzles that have lost all meaning. The 'good' guys are no better than the bad - Peter Guillam, though dogged and loyal, is little more than a thug; Ricky Tarr is new yuppie incarnate in all his cocky repulsiveness.

    Smiley, marvellously essayed by Alec Guinness - more obviously sharper than in the book, Hercules cleaning out the Aegean stables - loses even the barest traces of humanity, with vast reserves of calculated sadism and bureaucratic immorality, his thick glasses seeing all the detail and none of the big picture. Smiley needs the rules of the game more than anyone; without them he is left adrift in life, and the stupendous final shot shows how deeply that defeats him.

    Unusually for TV, this is a film of rare visual imagination, not in the mistakenly flashy, spuriously 'cinematic' sense beloved of ambitious tyros, but in its exploration of the medium's claustrophobia, as it traps its protagonists, in particular the way the camera's point of view chillingly suggests somebody else looking on, spying on the spies, making everything we see provisional, especially the flashbacks, which elide as much as they reveal.
    helpful•111
    17
    • the red duchess
    • Dec 7, 2000

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • September 29, 1980 (United States)
      • United Kingdom
      • English
      • Czech
      • Russian
    • Also known as
    • Filming locations
      • Bywater Street, Chelsea, London, England, UK
    • Production companies
      • British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
      • Paramount Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • 4 hours 50 minutes
      • Color
      • Mono

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