Smiley's People
1982 · TV series · 50 min episodes · 1 season
Created by John le Carré
Called out of retirement to settle the affairs of a friend, Smiley finds his old organization, the Circus, so overwhelmed by political considerations that it doesn't want to know what happened. He begins to follow up the clues of his friends past days, discovering that the clues lead to a high person in the Russian Secret service, and a secret important enough to kill for.
24 positive1 neutralfrom 25 commenters
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26 comments on Hacker News
I just wanted to mention at this opportunity that some British TV series from the late 70s, early 80s are absolutely brilliant and some of the best stuff I have ever watched. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley's People, Danger UXB, Sandbaggers and Sherlock Holmes are some of my favorites.
"Smiley's People" remains one of my favorite shows.
If you track it down, I highly recommend watching it with headphones. The sound design is amazing.
The sound of an empty room being profoundly menacing.
And if that tickles your fancy, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" [0] is an excellent miniseries from 1979 about a mole in MI6, perhaps the best spy series ever made. I didn't care about the movie much, so don't let this deter you, but Alec Guiness as George Smiley is a perfect match. John Le Carré thought so, too.
Oh and Patrick Steward plays "Karla" the soviet mastermind in this series and its successor "Smiley's People". Just a few seconds, but very memorable, its incredible really.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080297/
I think y'all (i.e. who've contributed anonymously to the article), have taken these words too literally. I think we're finally seeing the culmination of around 15+ years (post '08) of leadership mindset finally reap its rewards.
Over the last decade (last 3+ decades realistically, I'm around 35, so that's all my personal anecdotal data goes back to), these "leaders" have all thrown away the facade of "mentorship", "leadership" and all those heavy words.
It's replaced with one phrase, "Profit at any cost". So that means, if you got yours, you're good. If you didn't, see ya! All this is obviously reflected geopolitically (macro-level), so why are we so surprised when it's affecting us at the micro-level?
This is a quote from a really good TV series (called Smiley's people), delivered by George Smiley (Alec Guinness):
`In my time, Peter Guillam, I've seen Whitehall skirts go up and come down again. I've listened to all the excellent argument for doing nothing, and reaped the consequent frightful harvest. I've watched people hop up and down and call it progress. I've seen good men go to the wall and the idiots get promoted with a dazzling regularity. All I'm left with is me and thirty-odd years of cold war without the option.`
So, it's not been out of the norm in our times to watch our own backs. No one is watching ours, the workers, the talent. Moscow rules gentlemen.
Jerry Maguire. Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy and sequel (Smiley's People). an obscure film called Cabin of Errors.
I also strongly suspect you watched "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". If you enjoyed this movie and the way it is narrated, please do yourself a favor and watch all the BBC mini series from the 70ies/80ies based on John Le Carré books, namely "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "Smiley's People", and "A Perfect Spy" (or read the books, John Le Carré is an excellent writer, and "A Perfect Spy" can be compared to works by Dickens). You usually have no clue what is going on, and only learn about it later.
A.k.a. "Le bureau des légendes": criminally underrated. Was available to view in Australia on SBS On Demand, where I serendipitously encountered it. It is right up there with the best of John LeCarré's film and television adaptations: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "Smiley's People", "The Little Drummer Girl", etc.
That's a fair statement. My standard for this type of show remains BBC's Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (1979) and the follow up Smiley's People (1982).
Alec Guinness owns Smiley. Just perfect. Absolutely gripping yet low budget [+] it actually demands that you use your intellect to keep up. If you haven't seen those I say whip up ye old torrent client and get some.
Anyways, I did say "too greatly". Someone up there says "no spoilers" so ..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080297/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083480/
BBC made adaptation of Smiley's People[1] too, the third part of the Karla Trilogy.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083480/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
What I liked about the 1979 TTSS and Smiley's People was that the riddles, characters, and relationships had ample space to be explored properly with unashamedly long, drawn out scenes and side stories. The atmosphere of it is just terrific. I think it's the best piece of television I've watched.
Thing is, that was 10 hours per season. It was a futile task to try and cram that into a film; more so than most series/books because it has a fucking confusing plot. It'd have lent itself better to 2/3 parts - and then onto Smiley's people, which IMHO is even better!
I watch Smiley's People with Alec Guinness once a year. You can't make film like that today.
I have a large book collection and one of the cornerstones is a first edition of every John le Carre book published. I've read them all, and while he is probably best known for "Tinker Tailor ..." and "Smiley's People", I found "The Perfect Spy" to be just an exceptional work of literature - and at times it is also autobiographical (his father was a con man). I'm not surprised he was at times profoundly unhappy - in my experience, many highly creative people never find contentment.
The TV miniseries of "Tinker Tailor ...", "Smiley's People", "The Perfect Spy", and "The Night Manager" are just amazingly well done and highly recommended.
RIP David Cornwell.
I have a huge list of movies (and a few TV shows) that don't seem to have made the jump. Some are great (the BBC series of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People), some of them are very cult (Meet the Feebles), and some are just bad (Poor White Trash II, originally titled Scum of the Earth). Everyone said that streaming would make the "long tail" accessible because the costs to transfer and distribute would be so low, but that doesn't seem to have happened, at least to the extent that I'd like.
(I've had the same issue with music--my MP3 collection consists of a few dozen LPs that I've ripped because they were never digitized and added to the different services.)
Love your comment man! Appreciate it. And I agree with you about Smiley's People.
Ha, Soderbergh's Tarkovsky I have never seen - sounds like I should.
You're probably right about filmic - I was just looking for the word that encompasses film/tv/video.
FWIW I saw the film before the miniseries, and, really liked it at the time. It's been a minute. Sounds like maybe I should
I've been trying to stop myself from commenting further but you've forced me to!
> They’re not nearly as good as the actors in the film, and they’re used to a much lesser extent. (Seems a little mean but you did force me to spell it out.)
Factually incorrect on both counts and very unfair to an outstanding cast.
> The positive comments make me feel I do need to give the series another watch someday soon to understand where the fans are coming from. I think I had a much more positive view of Smiley’s People than some, which I’m curious about too...
Maybe a good idea to have a recent watch before criticising. Actually Smiley's people suffers from many of the flaws you've highlighted with a much weaker cast beyond Guinness.
> You’ve got me wishing it was filmic - unless I’m mistaken it’s 576i :(
Yes it was made for TV and made in 1979. As a result it is also utterly authentic.
I have many, many criticisms of the film which I'm not going to express because it may just be my taste and I'm glad that lots of people enjoyed it. I just don't want anyone to be put off seeking out the TV series because of an assessment that is so far out of the consensus.
Edit: for an independent view the LA Times gives a good assessment of both.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-xpm-2011-nov-27-la-ca-second-look-20111127-story.html
For anyone in Australia, BBC's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the follow-up Smiley's People are both available on Amazon Prime Video here - I don't know about elsewhere.
I'm gradually watching through TTSS now. So good, although the first episode suffers from the common problem of no subtitles for the Czech scenes in Ep 1.
I had tried watching the recent movie adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and was so put off that I had really low expectations when I happened into a copy of A Perfect Spy.
I was blown away by reading APS, I think it's really a masterpiece and would recommend it to anyone who has ever had a family, a job, or a secret.
I've since read most of the rest of his work and while APS is the best, the Smiley series was also very good and I felt genuinely moved by the conclusion of Smiley's People. You don't really have to read the rest in order but read Smiley's People last.
He had a long and productive life, and I hope a happy one, but this is still a great loss.
So many of the books are magnificent in their depth. So are the filmed adaptations: the BBC productions of Smiley's People and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and the more recent film of the latter; and the Night Manager miniseries.
What has also given me a lot of pleasure was the BBC Radio productions of the eight George Smiley books [1]. They've often kept me company: sometimes on long car journeys, sometimes when I'm feeling contemplative but need distraction. Such a treat.
Thank you for it all Mr. Le Carré.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/smiley-season/
If you've only seen the 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie, do yourself a favour and watch the 1979 miniseries with Alec Guinness and the sequel Smiley's People.
I recently watched _Smiley's People_, a British miniseries from the early 1990s with Alec Guinness. It's excellent, but what stuck me was how incredibly slow the pacing is compared to modern TV. The characters spend a lot of time just doing stuff: driving, walking, sitting on the bus, drinking tea and thinking. It has long scenes that are little masterpieces of drama and rising and falling tension. I find it much more enjoyable than the frenetic pace of a modern TV. Watching the main character wandering about in the woods looking for a clue or a 15-minute dialogue scene was more engaging than anything modern I've watched recently.
If we are speaking movies, the old BBC TV mini-series "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and "Smiley's People" with Alec Guinness as Smiley are absolutely great.
I don't know if it is common, certainly the reviews for the following three did not seem as warm as for the first, which was also the only one to win a Hugo. This is why I prefaced it with "if you like literature", because I think it depends on how much fiction you've read before and what you think is still fresh. Hyperion is most definitely fresh, a wild, tightly written run of imagination mixing Chaucer, Dune and Asimov with Heart of Darkness.
The problem with the way he wraps up the story [SPOILERS-ish] is that you feel that he was up against a wall and couldn't find a satisfactory way to connect the dots and picked the easy way out (similar to a deus ex machina - and yes, the Shrike sort of is one, but it limits itself predictably for your enjoyment). There is a certain suspension of disbelief, rules of the story you are willing to accept as it is woven, and through which you pick a direction and a pace, and he breaks them out of desperation.
A less major gripe I had was the stupidity of the "enemy". A worthy opponent would find it easier to manipulate humanity; in other words, a supposedly phenomenal antagonist is weakened to fill plot gaps. For an example of the opposite, watch the chess game between the two sides in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People (the BBC miniseries, not the modern remake which does not come close to Alec Guinness' performance). Karla is ferocious, intelligent, unstoppable, it is life's randomness that in a believable way opens the weakness (very well defended, throughout, but ultimately indefensible) that allows Smiley to get him.
And of course [spoiler!] the Dune series was heading to a similar conclusion as is reached about the crucibles within a couple of books; but the Dune meta-antagonist is much better written at least until the son takes over the writing to wrap up the series, and it is technically more of a very subtle Chekhov's Gun than a deus ex machina, which is why it feels so good as it clicks together (or might have).
Finally, I felt the last books were not as well edited. I think a parallel might be House of Cards where the first season (and perhaps the second) was the frantic work of a fresh team trying something bold and new, and the remaining episodes were the risk-free work of a team with the spotlight of the world on them, unwilling to risk their freshly acquired laurels. Frank and Claire Underwood become another token politician in another token political show with Zeitgeist-dependent in-jokes that will age badly, and the occasional flash of brilliance merely emphasising how much was lost. And perhaps I'm missing the point with House of Cards, perhaps the writers are saying that this is what happens when a narcissist wins the biggest prize and has nowhere else to go, existing only to keep it, but if so it is not said well.
I love Smiley's People as well as the BBC version of the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It's one of the smartest spy genre movies ever. I'd definitely think about watching this. But, maybe:
"This makes me want to quit watching. I’m not sure I have the stomach to know a storyline and its characters are going to be abandoned. That’s one of the two main problems with TV as a medium: that it might end too soon or that it might go on for too long."
BTW, I really liked how this article was written.
Smiley's People (the movie), despite being of much lower production value, is every bit as good as Tinker Tailor for those of you looking for more.
I liked this essay on plot holes (and more generally good writing) despite the all caps and rather long winded style: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/10/30/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs.-plot-holes-and-movie-logic
Personally, I found the strength of TBP and DF to be the depth that Liu achieves with his plots at the highest level, and it's important to take a step back and not judge him as pure hard SF (as it seems to have been sold to you, based on your review) but as a writer of literature using SF as his medium (as might have Heinlein, PKD, or Asimov who is his clear and direct inspiration).
The science "plot holes", the suspension of disbelief were I think fair play as a base to deploy his explanation of the Fermi paradox (which is to an extent the point of the whole series). Like psychohistory in Asimov's Foundation or Batman's seeming invincibility in Nolan and Ledger's masterpiece, it helps plot development and the greater ideas about human nature, politics, information operations and so on that are put forward by the book.
The analyses of human nature, particularly of bureaucracies and destruction via inaction (to quote Admiral Rickover, "the person who disclaims responsibility is correct: by taking this way out he is truly not responsible; he is irresponsible").
What makes a good book/movie/narrative work of art? To me it is increasingly about the plot and, to quote FCH, about how long the work can make you think about it after you're done reading it. It's clearly working since it's been weeks since I've read the books and I still couldn't resist making the quip despite the increasing amount of karma it is costing me for being off-topic.
Compared to another famous recent Hugo winner, Rainbows End, I thought Liu's work was much more enjoyable, because it was technically unpolished but had a great, interesting, innovative plot (and I'm sure half of the polish went missing in translation), whilst the latter was technically impeccable if now a little dated, but had little in the way of plot; the plot was almost a frame in which Vinge was developing his ideas about wearable tech and information operations' logical conclusion. It's like Esterhase mysteriously putting on a bad Hungarian accent in Smiley's People when he was the epitome of the try-too-hard British arriviste in TTSP - you can forgive them the glitch since the core of the writing is so exceptional and both Esterhases were fabulous characters with great depth.
Liu's ability to toy with the reader and take unconventional paths is rather rare in today's crop of writers. I would draw a parallel there with many of Charlie Stross' books; the polish is not always there, but he keeps reinventing himself and (at least for me) each foray into a new genre or avenue of thought is a success (and a source of great movies and books to explore).
As a side note, I thought it was one of the few successful depictions of a truly alien culture (what you call near-Strong-AI?) in SF today (and no, I didn't think Vinge's FOTD's Hugo winning hive-dogs were truly alien: put human heads instead, set it in medieval "Ireland-Spain", and you get Game of Thrones, down to an epic fire battle before the walls of King's Landing).
As a second side note, isn't it fun to draw parallels between TBP and the real world? How do you, today, as the PLA, deal with the fact the NSA can hear and read everything except your thoughts when planning defense strategy? Suddenly the sophons don't seem so alien... I don't like tin foil hats, so I didn't try too hard to put myself in the Chinese position, but it was definitely an interesting line of thought.
If you've not seen "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" the film is well worth it, although if you can get hold of the BBC TV series of that and "Smiley's People" . To me Alec Guinness just is George Smiley, far more then he is Ben Kenobi.
Plus as a bonus the books were still excellent reading even after knowing what happens.