Ben and I adore George Smiley. If you haven’t seen the BBC TV series ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ and ‘Smiley’s People’, you should. It’s how we wish TV was still made. Alec Guinness in the role of his life as a retired British spy being brought back to find a mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service, the story takes its time, with lengthy scenes of dialogue pulsating with tension for their entirety. It is quite simply brilliant, as indeed are the books by John Le Carré.

So to hear they’re going to make a film of it? Ooh. Bad. Must be bad. Surely. It’s going to be bad. And then I read (again via the good folks of Slash Film) that it’s being directed by Tomas Alfredson, who made the brilliant ‘Let The Right One In’, which tonally is great for ‘Tinker, Tailor…’. And it’s going to star Gary Oldman as Smiley. Fuck Yeah. Gary Oldman back being a fucking brilliant actor in a fucking brilliant role. And the supporting cast includes Ralph Fiennes, Michael Fassbender and Colin Firth, who I presume will be the other three main chaps at ‘the circus’, as they used to call the SIS (which if the TV series is a guide, is because it was based at Cambridge Circus in London, which is ironic, what with the Cambridge Spies scandal, which is what Le Carré was riffing on with ‘Tinker, Tailor…’). Oh and it’s been written by Peter Morgan wot did ‘The Queen’ (and also ‘The Damned Utd’, which is an enjoyable film but a bloody amazing book*), which is the smallest “yes!” from me about the whole thing, but it’s still a yes.

Gary Fucking Oldman. Smiley. Brilliant director and supporting cast. This better be bloody brilliant. I want to buy a ticket already.

* (When it first came out I read it, loved it, showed it to Ben and Barrington. They loved it. “Fuckin’ Leeds” – a phrase much-used in the book, not once in the film. Anyway. We loved it. We tried to option it. Surprisingly they went with the team wot made ‘The Queen’ rather than three unknown film-makers then making a film about wanking off a bear. Don’t know why.)