[.ca] Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Simply the Best:
Save yourself a few bucks and buy the 2 disc version from the U.K.The picture quality is relatively good and the movie is all there. I own a Phillips dvp642 dvd player and it plays everything that I throw at it. How this cheap little player $89.00 at wal Mart is able to convert a pal dvd to be able to play on an ntsc tv I don't know,but it does.It also will play region 2 disc without a problem. I have ordered many region 2/PAL discs from Amazon U.K because they are not available in Canada or the U.s.and they have all played perfectly.

Best of the Cold War:
Excellent TV series. Production on DVD runs almost 6 hours on 3 DVDs. Every actor in this production can actually act. Worth the purchase price just to see Guinness. If you have not read the book, go ahead and watch the DVD, read the book, then watch the DVD again. They are complimentary, neither the book nor the DVD spoil each other. It was originally a TV series, so don't expect excellent video quality or wide screen, it was shot in the late 70's for tv.

The Real Cold War? US vrs Brit TV (and boy are we losing):
Tinker Tailor, Smiley's People, Prime Suspect, The Singing Detective, The Office, Elizabeth R, Six Wives of Henry the Eighth, House of Cards ..... All brilliant television shows, and oh boy! do the Brits know how to do intelligent TV well. By comparison, US television looks like garbage - because it is! Outside of the shows on cable like Sopranos and Six Feet Under, quality US television has been in steady decline for years (not to mention its IQ quotient). What the heck is our problem?

TV that exceeds all boundaries:
While I agree with the prior reviewer that Tinker Tailor (and its companion Smiley's People) are excellent TV, their comments about the state of American TV are perhaps unwarranted. While I would grant that Prime Suspect, The Singing Detective, The Office, Elizabeth R, Six Wives of Henry the Eighth, House of Cards are all "brilliant television shows", they also represent highlights cherry-picked from three decades worth of productions (and only two of which are even fairly recent). It's also worth noting that the shows picked are essentially all mini-series. One could easily cherry pick a list of US TV shows of a similar quality level that ran far longer than any of those British shows (Homicide, Scrubs, Taxi, St. Elsewhere, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, West Wing). That is all, of course, beside the point. This is because "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is such a unique and marvelous piece of television drama that it really should be viewed not just as a shining example of British TV but rather as one of the finest achievements of human culture, period! If aliens were preparing to vaporize the planet unless we could prove that we were an intelligent and enlightened species, Tinker Tailor would be exhibit A (or at least B) for the defense. The source material is, of course, marvelous and Arthur Hopcraft's script is a text-book example of how to adapt a novel for the screen. Add to that, a skilled director who enticed some of Britain's (and by default the world's) best actors to give performances that rank among each one's career highlights. While I don't wish to downplay the sublime art of this series, there is a scientific (and therefore universal) principle at work. Start with your basic material (le Carre's book), add a catalyst (good script-writer and director, excellent actors, etc.) and the end result can be something truly marvelous.

Like the book? This production will blow you away!:
Sometime in the early 80's in New York I was working on something and looked up at the TV because I knew I recognized that man speaking ... who is that? Oh right! That's George Smiley! What's he doing on TV? Guinness captures Smiley so perfectly, so completely, that it was the character I recognized and not the actor. Only then, of course, did the penny drop and I realized what I was watching. It's among my top 5 favorite novels of all time, and this production fully captures the delightfully intricate plot-within-plot-within-plot. The casting is exemplary and the acting and direction are superb examples of what one has come to, if not expect then certainly hope for from the land of the RSC. If you know the books, you will not be disappointed. Stop reading this and click on "add to your cart". Several years ago I discovered this production on PAL video (not NTSC as we use here in the States). I unhesitatingly purchased a universal VHS machine solely so that I could watch this series, which I purchased from Amazon UK. I've watched it lovingly perhaps 6 times. Anybody wanna buy some used tapes? :-)