Two ring Circus

We all assumed that 1979's BBC tv adaptation of John le Carre's novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, was definitive.

Starring Alec Guinness in what was probably his most exhilaratingly brilliant role, the series was immensely intelligent and utterly beautiful.

Now there's an upstart film challenging for the title of Most Brilliant Ever adaptation, and this time it has improbably cast Gary Oldman as the retired spy-master (and wildly inappropriately named) George Smiley:

Oldman isn't bad. He manages to keep all those actorly fireworks in reasonable check, but the sad fact is that he's no Alec Guinness.

And nor, alas, is Colin Firth shown to be in the same league as the late, great Ian Richardson:

They are just not up to the job but there are worse things: Kathy Burke's portrayal of Connie Sachs is disastrous. Her supposedly plummy (Oxbridge blue stocking) accent sounds like a bad parody of Helena Bonham-Carter. She isn't anywhere near the same league as the late, great Beryl Reid, whose dipsomaniac (and possibly lesbian) Connie Sachs was a tour de force:

And John Hurt, despite his considerable wattage, is not Control; that role will forever be held by under-rated character actor Alexander Knox, an extraordinary physical presence of decay and imminent death, whose final frantic -- and ultimately doomed -- efforts to find the traitor within are the only thing keeping him going.

So much for the negatives, the new film has a lot going for it: Tom Hardy's Ricki Tarr is much more credible than Hywel Bennett's rather cerebral spy (despite a line in the mini-series, it is impossible to conceive of Hywel Bennett ever doing the football pools). Hardy is helped in his interpretation by his rather gloriously thuggish presence:

Smiley's bodyguard Mendel, a retired Special Branch Superintendent, was brilliantly played in the mini-series by George Sewell, a portrayal far beyond the reach of Roger Lloyd-Pack; but Benedict Cumberbatch brings a rich new perspective to Smiley's sidekick Peter Guillam.

Cumberbatch, who is fast becoming one of the strongest actors of his generation, gives us a Peter Guillam who is a closet homosexual (not the very straight action-ish man of the mini-series - I can't remember what le Carre made him) who dumps his live-in boyfriend when Smiley instructs him to tidy up any loose ends in his private life: his character is both ruthless and wretched, wracked by grief, one double life inside another.

Verdict? If you've never seen the mini-series you'll love the film. And even if you have, there is much to enjoy here.