Brits waste hundreds of hours every year scrolling through streaming services looking for something to watch. Yahoo wants to save you a scroll by recommending one movie — under two hours long — that you should watch this week, every Friday
By the time you read this, we’ll have all seen the grand finale of Celebrity Traitors, which means you’ll already be anxiously awaiting your next fix of betrayal in a Scottish castle.
We can’t give you a castle, but we can give you plenty of betrayal with our recommendation to stream the dense British espionage thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. If you’re in the UK, it’s available for free on BBC iPlayer. And there are enough manipulative masterminds here to give even Alan Carr a run for his money. Now there’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d be writing a month ago.
What is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy about?
The film is Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s take on the classic novel by spy specialist — and actual spy — John le Carré. This was before Alfredson went off to adapt another acclaimed crime novelist and ended up making The Snowman — one of the worst movies in recent memory. Thankfully, he was on much safer ground with Tinker Tailor, which earned three Oscar nominations and an impressive $81m (£62m) at the box office.
It’s a knotty thriller that balances betrayal on top of betrayal, rewarding audiences who are willing to pay attention. At the centre of it all is Gary Oldman as George Smiley — a senior British intelligence officer tasked with uncovering the identity of a Soviet mole within the service. He teams up with right-hand man Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) to root around and work out what’s going on.
This is predominantly about suspicious-looking people in dark suits talking in circles around each other while surrounded by clouds of pipe smoke. It doesn’t scream visual dynamism, and there’s certainly none of the visual camp of Claudia Winkleman on the back of a horse in a faux funeral procession. However, in Alfredson’s hands — combined with a smart script by the late Bridget O’Connor and her husband Peter Straughan — this is a slick and engrossing thriller, as long as you can keep up with what’s going on.
What you need to know
📽️ Movie: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
⏰ Runtime: 118m
🎭 Actors: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch
🍿 Genre: Spy thriller
🤔 Similar to: Bridge of Spies, Darkest Hour, Body of Lies
📺 Streaming service: BBC iPlayer, Prime Video
🍅 Ratings: 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, 3.7/5 on Letterboxd, 7/10 on IMDb
The story was already very well-known to British audiences by the time the film came along. Le Carré’s novel was a staple, and the BBC mounted an acclaimed TV series adaptation in 1979, with a Bafta-winning Sir Alec Guinness in the lead role as Smiley. Le Carré has called that version his favourite ever take on his work, though he notably makes a cameo appearance in the movie version — handing it something of a seal of approval.
Why we love it
The movie is a testament to the quality of its screenplay, not to mention the tremendous work of casting director Jina Jay in assembling arguably the most formidable British acting ensemble since the Harry Potter franchise.
Oldman was the one who got an Oscar nomination — losing out to Jean Dujardin’s crowd-pleasing Gene Kelly homage in The Artist — for a performance with far more nuance than the jowly-growly take on Churchill that would eventually earn him an Academy Award years later.
Gary Oldman and John Hurt in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. (StudioCanal/Alamy)
However, despite Oldman hoovering up the acclaim, it was some of the supporting performances that really stood out. Cumberbatch, here in the midst of his Sherlock-induced elevation to superstar status, is tremendous as Smiley’s key ally, while Tom Hardy is brilliantly mercurial — utilising his unique charisma in a more subtle way than some of his louder later roles.
Elsewhere, reliable old hands abound, with the likes of Colin Firth, Ciarán Hinds, Mark Strong, and the late John Hurt making the most of their minutes on screen. Thanks to just about everybody’s national treasure — or at least burgeoning national treasure — status, it’s impossible to predict the culprit of the central plot just by virtue of fame, as you often can in whodunnit ensembles.
Did it get a sequel?
Inevitably, given the film’s critical and commercial success, sequels were mooted. Producer Eric Fellner was keen and said a sequel involving both Straughan and Alfredson was in active development, but by the time Oldman was promoting Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2014, momentum had stalled, and the sequel film seemed unlikely. Two years later, however, Oldman said there was a script and production was imminent, but it never materialised.
Colin Firth as British spy Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. (StudioCanal/Alamy)
In the intervening years, the rights to Smiley reverted to Le Carré’s estate. Oldman’s producing partner, Douglas Urbanski, told Radio Times in 2024 that an “unexpected rights issue” scuppered an adaptation of Smiley’s People, led by the actor. “We’ve reached out, including again recently, to Le Carré’s sons and — the damnedest thing — they have no interest in Gary playing Smiley again. I don’t know why,” said Urbanski.
Read more: Slow Horses pays subtle tribute to Gary Oldman’s The Dark Knight co-star Heath Ledger (The Independent, 2 min read)
While it now seems unlikely that Oldman will return to his shadowy spy role, the world of Smiley is definitely heading back to us. Succession star Matthew Macfadyen has signed on to play the character in a new TV series called A Legacy Of Spies. The show takes its title from Le Carré’s 2017 novel, which weaves around the timelines of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and his earlier novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
The series will adapt numerous Smiley stories, undoubtedly adding yet another spin on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. While the previous TV series remains definitive for spy fans of a certain vintage, Alfredson’s take stands out as a very worthy spin on the material indeed. It might not have a beloved stand-up comedian cackling in a cloak, but it’s got more than enough betrayal to keep you going until The Traitors returns.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is streaming for free in the UK on BBC iPlayer.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.movies.yahoo.com ’
