As an outsider, Smiley is asked to investigate a source who claims to know more about the mysterious Karla, the head of Moscow Centre and Smiley’s nemesis. But the mole sill seems to be active at the Circus as new information has come to light. Once Control’s loyal deputy, he was dully demoted after the incident. We suddenly fast forward a few years and observe an impeccable Alec Guinness as the prudent George Smiley strolling through London. This clandestine endeavour goes wrong spectacularly, ending Control’s tenure at the Circus. His plan involves sending agent Jim Prideaux (Ian Bannen) to Czechoslovakia to meet a defecting general who knows more. He knows that a mole has infiltrated his organisation and he is determined to flush him out. The series begins with a secret mission that is carefully being prepared by the shadowy Control, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or the Circus as it is called in mock affection. The fact that these traitors were pillars of British society, shocked a nation that prided itself on safeguarding traditions and believing in the stable rigidity of class distinctions. The story is also loosely based on the case of the infamous Cambridge spy ring that passed on valuable information to the Soviet Union. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is about betrayal at the highest levels of the British intelligence bureaucracy. There is no room for nostalgia in Irvin’s version, only a melancholic and bitter realisation that something is rotten in the state of good old Blighty. How different from the more slick approach of Tomas Alfredson’s 2011 movie adaptation that, in comparison, seems seeped in period nostalgia. Albion is in the grips of austerity and an unavoidable sombreness haunts every frame.

It’s almost as if the city hasn’t recovered from the bombing during WWII and all the windows are still blacked out.

Seventies London is literally a dark place here. The lament for the loss of empire hangs heavy in John Irvin’s six-part adaptation of John le Carré’s classic spy novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Terence Rigby and Alec Guinnes in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979).

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