Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy - Head to Head

[Jam The Man]

Thought both were good.
Personally I preferred Smileys People as a plot line though

 

[Steve in Japan]

TTSS - has to be Alec Guiness TV series for me. Its got that whole smoky, bad suit, bad haircut thing going on - very atmospheric. But Guiness is unbelievably good as Smiley.

Not my favourite Smiley story though - that would be The Honourable Schoolboy which unfortunately was never filmed (due to cost I think, the Beeb didnt fancy flying the crew to Hong Kong and SE Asia)

 

[The Large One]

god i thought the movie was absolutely awful - one of the few movies i've fallen asleep to

Not enough car chases?

 

[vegster]

god i thought the movie was absolutely awful - one of the few movies i've fallen asleep to

You should have seen A Single Man and Letters to Juliet. What I put myself through for love....

The film was fantastic, very atmospheric and all the main leads at The Circus were amazing. It was fascinating to watch Oldman and Cumberbatch unpicking the clues and chasing down the threads that could confirm who the rat was.

 

[LamieRobertson]

TV series without doubt

 

[The Large One]

I don't think it's much of a spoiler, but in one of the later episodes of the TV series, George Smiley goes to visit Connie Sachs (played by Beryl Reid). On registering surprise at George's arrival, she says "Oh, George, my darling man, you haven't come to sell me a Hoover..."

I can't help feeling that that would have been an ad lib Beryl Reid would have put in as a past reference to one of Alec Guinness' former roles as 'Our Man in Havana'.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

TTSS - has to be Alec Guiness TV series for me. Its got that whole smoky, bad suit, bad haircut thing going on - very atmospheric. But Guiness is unbelievably good as Smiley.

Not my favourite Smiley story though - that would be The Honourable Schoolboy which unfortunately was never filmed (due to cost I think, the Beeb didnt fancy flying the crew to Hong Kong and SE Asia)

I have the trilogy in a single volume, which i reread around the time the film was released. I found The Honourable Schoolboy to be by far the weakest of the three.

 

[Seagull over Canaryland]

Both the film and TV series were excellent in their own ways. I enjoyed how they portrayed the whole spy business as a grey, seedy and unglamorous business, the complete opposite to Hollywood's images. The film was brilliantly acted in a very understated way which gave it all the more edge.

I enjoyed both for having read a bit about the background to that era and the real spies. I can recommend 'Defence of the Realm - History of MI5' by Christopher Andrews. OK it's a weighty tome but fascinating especially when you realise the scary extent of traitors at the very top of British intelligence who fed secrets to Russia for 40 years. A common thread was incompetence and an unwillingness to believe evidence that many of our so called good guys were actually bad. The TV programme this week about the Cold War and Blunt, Burgess, Maclean and Philby was a classic where the old boy establishment closed ranks rather than purge the suspects many years earlier. I think they were terrified of the political consequences. No wonder the Americans didn't trust us. Goodness knows how many lives that cost and what secrets were divulged.

Blunt and Philby should have paid a much heavier price for their treason.

 

[Sergei's Celebration]

The TV programme this week about the Cold War and Blunt, Burgess, Maclean and Philby was a classic where the old boy establishment closed ranks rather than purge the suspects many years earlier. I think they were terrified of the political consequences. No wonder the Americans didn't trust us. Goodness knows how many lives that cost and what secrets were divulged.

Blunt and Philby should have paid a much heavier price for their treason.

What programme was that? I'd be interested in watching it.

 

[User removed 4]

Not enough car chases?

Have you considered he might have just found the film awful ?

 

[User removed 4]

What programme was that? I'd be interested in watching it.

it was on after the ttss, tv series on bbc

 

[Bold Seagull]

Have you considered he might have just found the film awful ?

Bit odd to come onto a thread about TTSS, with obvious enthusiasts debating the merits of the film and tv series, and just saying the film is 'absolutely awful' without any reason or comment for that whatsoever.

It was a spy thriller without all the modern day car chases, action packed super hero like fight scenes etc. So for someone who found it something to go to sleep to, "not enough car chases?" is probably an apt question.

 

[User removed 4]

Bit odd to come onto a thread about TTSS, with obvious enthusiasts debating the merits of the film and tv series, and just saying the film is 'absolutely awful' without any reason or comment for that whatsoever.

It was a spy thriller without all the modern day car chases, action packed super hero like fight scenes etc. So for someone who found it something to go to sleep to, "not enough car chases?" is probably an apt question.

Not at all, it was a massive assumption, interlaced with cultural snobbery that someone who didn't share the OP's view and found the film 'awful' would automatically be a fan of Bruce Willis style action thriller's.

 

[The Large One]

Have you considered he might have just found the film awful ?

Not at all, it was a massive assumption, interlaced with cultural snobbery that someone who didn't share the OP's view and found the film 'awful' would automatically be a fan of Bruce Willis style action thriller's.

He said he fell asleep to it. Given its ponderous, cerebral nature, it's not an almighty leap to think he considered it boring.

So it's a small assumption, not a massive one. Similarly, by erroneously using the phrase 'cultural snobbery', it would appear I wouldn't be the only one making assumptions.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Not at all, it was a massive assumption, interlaced with cultural snobbery that someone who didn't share the OP's view and found the film 'awful' would automatically be a fan of Bruce Willis style action thriller's.

Well yes, but the OP left that avenue well and truly open by giving no substantiation to calling it absolutely awful. It certainly wasn't absolutely awful, even if it wasn't someone's cup of tea.

 

[Seagull over Canaryland]

What programme was that? I'd be interested in watching it.

'The Spy who went into the Cold' was on BBC4 last Monday night and repeated last night. Presumably it is now on i-player.

Mainly about Philby, but gives a good feel for the messy state of our national security in that era and how the spies slipped through the net many times.

I also recall one of Ben Macintyre's books mentioning Antony Blunt being a senior military intelligence officer during WW2 and being perfectly placed to intercept many of our state secrets and know about our own network of spies before passing this on to the Russians. The sad thing is because of Blunt and his cronies that the Russians knew exactly when we were deceiving them.

 

[Mackenzie]

The series is superb....I haven't seen the film.

 

[beorhthelm]

... I enjoyed how they portrayed the whole spy business as a grey, seedy and unglamorous business, the complete opposite to Hollywood's images. [...]
A common thread was incompetence and an unwillingness to believe evidence that many of our so called good guys were actually bad.

themes we see are quite real and still apply today, even with the americans.

 

[brakespear]

Saw the film and really didn't like it - vaguely remember the TV show but I think I was a bit young to watch it (or at least in my young teens I think).

edit: having re-read the OP I would have been nine not in my teens.

 

[Seagull over Canaryland]

themes we see are quite real and still apply today, even with the americans.

Of course the Americans had plenty of espionage problems of their own but we were so incompetent and failed to act so often that the FBI felt obliged to out some of our spies for us.

The other thing is why we seemed to recruit spies whose background and personality gave them the charisma to mingle with the right people but also was often flawed (womanisers, homosexuals, alcoholics, druggies etc) so they were more vulnerable to be being 'turned'. As suggested in the BBC programme about Philby those with homosexual leanings were used to being very discrete about their secrets during that era. Even so some of ours we not that subtle.