Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy / Smileys People Mini Series DVD   BBC

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - In Sir Alec Guinness's first major TV role he plays George Smiley, a retired agent agent who is secretly brought into 'the circus' (the code name for British Secret Intelligence Service) to root out a top-level mole. Gradually piecing together the story, the weary but determined Smiley trawls through the murky waters of Cold War espionage and his own past. Smiley's People - The bespectacled spymaster is once more called from retirement to come to the aid of 'the circus' - and he returns with a vengeance. The murder of an emigre Soviet General, who was also a British agent, sends him digging into the past on atwisted trail across Europe that moves, inexorably, towards a final showdown with his old adversary, Karla of Moscow Centre.