Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) series poster
War & Politics · Drama · Mystery

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

1979 1 season 7 episodes limited series
75 Pulse
8.4 IMDb
One weekend 6 hours
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Plot

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a seven-part BBC2 spy drama written by Arthur Hopcraft, adapted from John le Carré's eponymous 1974 novel. The serial, which stars Alec Guinness, Alexander Knox, Ian Richardson, Michael Jayston, Bernard Hepton, Anthony Bate, Ian Bannen, George Sewell and Michael Aldridge, was broadcast from 10 September to 22 October 1979. George Smiley, the ageing master spy of the Cold War and once heir-apparent to Control, is brought back out of retirement to flush out a top level mole within the Circus. Smiley must travel back through his life and murky workings of the Circus to unravel the net spun by his nemesis Karla 'The Sandman' of the KGB and reveal the identity of the mole before he disappears.

Credits

Created by: John Irvin, John le Carré

Cast: Alec Guinness, Michael Jayston, Anthony Bate, George Sewell, Bernard Hepton, Robert MacNeil

How the Pulse Score works

For series, Pulse starts from the IMDb rating shrunk by vote count, then applies FORMAT CALIBRATION. Series score systematically higher than films on IMDb, so using the raw number would unfairly push a show like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to the top of a film catalogue. Calibration maps the series distribution onto the film one; meaning 75 is COMPARABLE to a film with the same Pulse.

One more difference from films: Letterboxd does not track series, so series Pulse derives from a single source (IMDb) rather than two.

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