Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Season 1)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) is the BBC's seven-part adaptation of John le Carré's novel, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Cold War, one buried question: which man at the top of British intelligence has been feeding Moscow for years.

George Smiley has been quietly retired, then just as quietly called back. Somewhere inside the Circus — the show's name for the secret service — sits a mole, and the only way to find him is from within, sifting old files and older friendships. Alec Guinness plays Smiley with almost no wasted motion: tired, meticulous, courteous, a man who listens harder than anyone in the room. Every conversation plays like chess, and the loser simply vanishes.

Arthur Hopcraft wrote the scripts, John Irvin directed, and Smiley's unseen rival Karla of the KGB hangs over all of it. This is espionage with no gunfights and no car chases — the whole war is fought in offices, archives and long silences. Slow, cold and completely gripping, it set the bar for the smart betrayal drama. Stream all episodes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy online on iFILM.