Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy : Complete BBC Series [DVD] [1979]

In 1979, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was adapted to television as a seven-part series for the BBC, featuring Alec Guinness as George Smiley, of the SIS; the initial broadcast coincided with the British Government announcing that Anthony Blunt, the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures, was one of the Cambridge Five traitors. In the United States, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) broadcast it as part of its “Great Performances” series, introduced by the Canadian journalist Robert MacNeil, who explained the workings of SIS.

The main title credits feature a matryoshka doll progressively revealing a doll more irate than the previous, with the final doll being faceless, an allusion to Winston Churchill’s describing Russia as “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”; analogously, the literary George Smiley concludes that only Karla saw the last doll in the British traitor. The end credits music, an arrangement of Nunc dimittis (‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace’) from the Book of Common Prayer (1662), was composed by Geoffrey Burgon for organ, trumpet and treble; the score earned the Ivor Novello Award for 1979. The end credits appear over a stationary shot of Oxford University. (Courtesy of Wikipedia).

Trivia at IMDb

So far I’ve seen the first DVD. Absolutely fantastic. Stay tuned.

By the way, how do you like the following scene?

The opening scene

My Last Acquisition: Phantom, by Jo Nesbo

I’ve just ordered Phantom (Original title: Gjenferd), Jo Nesbo’s latest book (#9 in the Harry Hole series). The information at Salomonsson Agency reads:  

Summer. A boy, Gusto, is lying on the floor of an Oslo apartment. He is bleeding and will soon die. He is trying to make sense of what has happened. In order to place his life and death in some kind of context he begins to tell his story. Outside, the church bells chime.
Autumn. Former Police Detective Harry Hole returns to Oslo after three years abroad. He seeks out his former boss at Police Headquarters to request permission to investigate a homicide. But the case is already closed: a young junkie, Gusto, was in all likelihood shot dead by a fellow addict in a squabble over drugs. Yet, Harry is granted permission to visit the boy’s alleged killer in jail. There, he meets himself and his own history. What follows is the solitary investigation of what appears to be the first impossible case in Harry Hole’s career. And while Harry is searching, Gusto continues his story.
A man walks the dark streets of night-time Oslo. The streets are his and he has always been there. He is a phantom.

The Harry Hole Series: The Bat, The Cockroaches, The Redbreast, Nemesis, The Devil’s Star, The Redeemer, The Snowman, The Leopard, Phantom. The first two are not available in English yet.

Vintage Books

Stay tuned.