Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Posted by J on October 9, 2008
“Ah, those were the days! Halcyon days.” So one character sighs in the six-episode Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. We couldn’t 
agree more. The world was a simpler place when they were commies and we were capitalists. The USSR was the ultimate baddie and we, the forces of good, were its opposite. Nowadays the world is integrated, complicated, a giant hodgepodge of corporate conglomerates and individual consumers. What happened to the exotic world of spycraft and a firm knowledge of what good and evil are?
But Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy explodes this myth of what the bygone days of spycraft were like. We couldn’t be more wrong, so the miniseries tells us. We weren’t necessarily the good guys. We operated a Department of Espionage, a bureaucracy of spies that was as self-serving as it was essential to national affairs. There is not necessarily a good guy in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, though there is a master detective who solves the crime. The men who are spies hide secrets, push and make way for their own self-interests, and blind themselves to good, ultimate goals.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a 1979 miniseries put out by the BBC, based on a novel of the same name. It is a miniseries that requires lots of work on the part of its viewers. All of its characters assume a level of knowledge that viewers won’t attain until at least the fourth episode. We advise keeping a scorecard of names and relationships. There is only one action scene, in the first episode, and every scene after that is dialogue-only. This is a series whose engine is words and only words (not visuals). Thankfully, it is probably one of the best acted miniseries ever made.
The series begins with the head of the British spy organization plainly stating, “We have a mole.” But which British agent is working for the Russians? It is at least one of five men, all at the highest levels of “the Circus,” the pet name for Britain’s spy bureaucracy. It might be more than one of them. One of these men — George Smiley, played by the wonderful Alec Guinness — is chosen to find out who the mole is. So begins Smiley’s investigation, which requires plenty of cooperation and coercion, and lots of sly, subtle dialogue. One of the pleasures of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is analyzing the way these characters talk to each other. They hint, imply, feint, pretend, but never reveal. Smiley has quite the task. Good thing he is a mastermind.
There are even suggestions that Smiley himself is the spy. Why, after all, was he pegged as a suspect? Where is his wife, Ann? Why do we never see her? Her name may be code for something else. In this miniseries, any word or gesture may be a code that we viewers are unaware of.
The point is that, as viewers, we can trust no one. All of the British spies work for themselves. They all understand the lure of money and power. They understand and sympathize with their Russian counterparts, who alone know what the Brits are going through. These spies operate on the border between nations, the muddy in-between where anybody can be loyal to anybody, as long as they are being paid a sufficient amount of “chickenfeed.” As one of them says, “I’m a good socialist, always looking to make a buck, and a good capitalist, always ready for the revolution.”
Does Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy really deserved to be called “Great”? Probably not. It will be out-of-date soon, when generations who know nothing of the Cold War mature. But as an example of a provocative series constructed almost entirely out of dialogue, it is far more engaging than you’d think. Just stick with it through Episode Three. And remember to keep a scorecard.
Though the series offers little in the way of redemption, even though the mystery is solved, each episode ends with a shot of a cathedral. In the background, choir boys sing a traditional hymn. The point, if anything, is that the world of spycraft needs Christ too. Otherwise, Smiley’s mission to out the mole is all for nothing.
Entertainment: 5-9 (depends on the episode)
Intelligence: 7
Morality: 7 (one risque scene in Episode 2)
