Tinker Tailor Soldier Shyte....

Did you watch the original BBC tv series. ? That was very good. Alec Guiness as George Smiley.

I have not facts but i have heard it was brilliant....I will try and get to see it if i can.

One of my favourite films (and television series), very evocative of its time.

Know what you mean, acey deucy, every shot seems freighted with an overbearing sadness.

Elegy for the British Empire, from the 1950's?

To help OP without spoilers...

Before the series starts, there is a mole in the circus (MI6). Control knows this, but does not know who is the mole so has sent Jim to Czechoslovakia to suss it out. Jim is betrayed and shot, which causes an almighty stink and the old-timers at the Circus are pensioned off -- Control, Smiley and Connie. Jim has become a teacher at a rather odd school.

At the start of the series: Ricky Tarr has learned there is a mole and Smiley is called back to hunt him down. The rest is basically a whodunnit with Smiley as the detective.

To play along at home, pay attention to who knew what and when about the night Jim was shot. That's the key.

There is a related subplot where the Circus has a spy in Russia but I cannot remember the codeword used for the "product" -- ie the information passed by the spy. To maintain the Russian spy's cover, Circus gives him back some intelligence in return -- just minor stuff or "chicken feed".

The question is, which way is the real intelligence flowing?

great book, great tv series, average film

for a great espionage film watch The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

I was a good friend of Geoffrey Burgon who wrote the music for that TV series (plus other TVs series as well.) He's sadly missed. We were on the point of forming a jazz combo a year or so before he passed away, but it never came to fruition as he soon became ill shortly after we talked about it. His hobby was to play jazz trumpet/flugelhorn occasionally and I backed him with various lineups. That was back in the 1980's.

A_T is correct ' The Spy who came in from the Cold ' is a small masterpiece
One of the  greatest films ever made

I liked Brideshead revisited theme mokegibboni, although not jazz very evocative .
Could only have been English

Yes it was. Geoff's Nunc Dimittis (the closing theme to the Tinker Tailor TV programme) was played live by an orchestral section at his funeral. As you can imagine, there was not a dry eye in the church!

yes the notes stab softly and melancholy trickles out
I wish we could go back to the times of  tinker tailor soldier spy and know that everything would be ok for the next 50 years
Unlike the next 50 ?

It would be nice if everyone had to write a piece of music before they left school at 16 , to be taught like a mathematical formula
some would be good , some poor , some very good naturally
It would be nice to look at your friend and say, gosh how did you write that ?
And he could tell you .

It's a brilliant film.

However, if you have little/no knowledge of the importance/intrigue of the spy network, MI5/MI6 etc then it can be confusing.

Read the superb books by Ben Macintyre (eg. A spy among friends, Agent Zigzag etc). Lucid, fascinating and proof that fact really is stranger than fiction.

Bought the DVD ...brilliant film.