Day 545

Aka Sun 29^th 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.