Starting where Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy leaves off, Smiley’s People picks up when Smiley is pretty much all but through with his career. British Intelligence and the Circus brings him back in after one of his old Russian contacts gets a bullet in the head in London. Smiley is asked to clean the investigation up so that both organizations don’t have to get involved. What Smiley thinks is a simple hit, turns out to be something much more than he bargained for — Karla’s return. Armed with his wits, old friends and an endless amount of patience, Smiley does what he can to save his old friend’s memory, and bring down Karla.
What makes this series particularly brilliant is how meticulously every portion of this mystery is put together. It’s an amazing balance of strong storytelling and perfect character development. It starts out slow, as you kind of get a feel for who George Smiley is and what he can do to help out the situation at hand (Vladmir’s murder) without him actually showing all his cards. You also get a good feel for his ‘no nonsense’ attitude he casts on his audience, and how intricate he is when pulling details out of people.
As the story continues, the pieces of the puzzle become more intricate and telling to how deep the story is going to go with a single murder. You switch from a simple murder to a crumbling Russian society spitting out its own dirty secrets, and ending in a bigger web of mystery where Smiley’s own realization of self comes out in the most dramatic fashion.
All I can say about this story is ‘thank GOD for television’.
The only way for this story and its characters to be told properly is by breaking it up in six episodes, which equal out to be a little under six hours. Imagining any of this compressed into a two-hour film would not do any justice for what’s trying to be portrayed here. John le Carré’s script really gets to do what it needs to do to develop this long story into a competent piece of work thanks to the television medium. It is given proper time to clearly define the players inside the story, as well as the story surrounding the players. Of course, it always helps when Alec Guinness is involved.
Anyway, Smiley’s People is a perfect compliment to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and is just as good, if not better in some respect. It won’t disappoint you.
As for the Blu-ray, this was rough. The Blu-ray transfer of the 1982 BBC series didn’t do very well. There are a few fleeting moments where it’s gorgeous, but more times than not, you get a lot of graininess and artifacts in the picture that really drown out the fact that it’s a Blu-ray. This isn’t typical of Acorn Media’s Blu-rays, as they’re generally spot on (or better) than this, but for some reason this one really didn’t look great. I would be curious to see what the source material of the Blu-ray was before the transfer occurred.
As for the audio, you get spot on audio that is remastered in 2.0 DTS-HD. It’s quite solid for a television series in the early 80s. No reason to go 5.1 on this release.
Finally, the features are probably the strongest sell to this Blu-ray package. Here’s what you’re looking at:
– Deleted Scenes
– Interview with John le Carré
– Production Notes
– Glossary of Main Characters and Terms
– John le Carré Biography and Booklist
It’s impressive that this much was squeezed out of a series from 1982. You get some very solid deleted scenes (lots of them) on this release, as well as a very interesting interview with John le Carré. The rest of it is added bonuses for people who have never read his books or seen other series/movies from the man. It’s kind of like the glossary included in the book release of A Clockwork Orange ; it’s useful to have around for impending questions.
Overall, the special features are solid as a rock and the best part of the Blu-ray (outside of the show).
