Tarr Tells His Story

Everyone thought Ricki Tarr had defected. Instead he turns up with the confirmation the Circus has been dreading: there really is a Soviet mole inside the Service, buried deep in the operation. The rumour that everyone half-believed now has a witness. Nothing about the Service looks the same once it's said aloud.

The witness is Tarr himself, an active agent whose story gets told in rooms, to the assembled spy masters. It is the tale of the Sandmann, the KGB man who is Smiley's opposite number and long-time nemesis, and of the network the Sandmann has been running inside the Circus. The Sandmann stays off screen, which is how a good villain should be introduced. And the telling is what sways Smiley. He has heard a thousand such tales, and he knows this one is different. It convinces him to go back into the service he had left and hunt the mole in secret, telling only the people he has to.

This one was written by John le Carré and Arthur Hopcraft and directed by John Irvin, and it went out on 17 September 1979. Alec Guinness is back as Smiley, with Michael Jayston as Peter Guillam, Anthony Bate as Sir Oliver Lacon and Hywel Bennett as Ricki Tarr, the man whose story sets everything moving. Thorley Walters is Tufty Thessinger, George Sewell is Mendel, Susan Kodicek is Irina, Hilary Minster is Boris, Pauline Letts is Mrs. Pope-Graham and Stephen Earle is Norman. It is a quieter hour than the first, and all the better for it.

It is a talky instalment in the best sense. Tarr tells a story in a room, and the telling changes everything that follows. That's the grim but comforting rhythm of British intelligence life, and the show settles back into it without fuss. It all arrives through one man's memory.