Our brief topic today is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. A book, a television series, a film. I have reconsidered each of these media recently. The order of my original consumption was television, book, film. All are meritorious, indeed if I was to teach a course on literary adaptation I might take these texts as my basis.
The book is very good, not, I think, le Carre's best - that would be A Perfect Spy to my mind. Mind you my enjoyment of the novel was partially obstructed by having seen the television series and thus knowing who the culprit was in advance. To be precise I had in fact known that outcome the week before the final episode of the television production, thanks to a mean and small-minded hint delivered by Philip Purser in his Sunday Telegraph column the weekend before transmission - what a knob. I recall Purser's name with enmity even at the distance of four decades.
The television series was (and remains) superb. It hoovered up awards and Alec Guinness as Smiley may just have given his finest performance. It can still be re-watched profitably even if the original suspense is absent.
The film is also well done but it is this version with which I have the greatest difficulty. Perhaps it is the lack of supense, perhaps if I came to it unburdened I would have enjoyed it all the more. But sometimes the longeurs are the thing. So in the novel, so in the television series. The film, admirable as it may be, is too short to do justice to this particular tale. The film - 69/100.
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