If the explosive finale of The Night Manager’s second series has left you hopelessly bereft, craving more of John le Carré’s intricate webs of deception and moral compromise, there’s an easy fix. Sitting on iPlayer is the BBC’s 1979 adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, published just five years earlier; it remains the most electrifying distillation of the author’s work ever committed to the small screen.
Widely considered to be one of the greatest British television dramas alongside Brideshead Revisited, Tinker Tailor anticipated the box-set era by decades, with seven filmed episodes unfolding with such languor that patience became a prerequisite. But, my word, what a payoff. The story follows George Smiley’s hunt for a Soviet mole buried deep within MI6 – inspired by the notorious double agent Kim Philby, who had duped le Carré himself during his own foreign-intelligence service days in the early Sixties. Clive James, the venerable TV critic, initially dismissed the series as “turgid” and “incomprehensible”. How wrong he was.
