Aka Sun 29th July
Felt a little under the weather, and I’ve got a bit of
toothache, so didn’t get up to much and just watched the BBC production of Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy…
…in which George Smiley, played by Alec Guinness, is tasked
with investigating whether or not there is a mole on the British Secret
Intelligence Service. It’s a very simple premise, with dashes of whodunit, but
given that we’re dealing with spies you never know who is telling the truth, a
half-truth or just plain lying and why they are saying what they are saying,
are they the mole, are they protecting the national interest/secrets, etc. Is Smiley
the mole and is he looking for someone to set up?
TTSS was filmed in 1979 and its pacing is very different
from most modern TV pacing, TTSS takes it time, to set the mood and let us live
these people’s lives. On one level its like taking a bath in nostalgia, there’s
smoking indoors, plenty of drinking, all the people in power/authority are male
and the women are mostly secretaries or wives. It’s also a nice antidote to
today’s flashy spy stories, there are no elaborate kung-fu fights, or satellites
zooming down to read a licence plate, drones or Bond style gadgets, just time-consuming
investigating and questionings and thinking until the mole is caught.
At times it almost feels like a documentary or a time capsule
of the time in Britain when our food, clothes, tastes, holidays, etc. were
changing to reflect a more outward looking, a more confident, more European
Britain. It was the start of Thatcher’s Britain, before the miner’s strike, the
birth of the yuppie, deregulation of the City, massive privatisation and “…there
is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are
families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people
must look to themselves first”. Or at least that’s part of what I get from it.
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