The BBC Smiley Call of the Dead

The greater part of a year has passed since immersing myself in the world of John Le Carré and the opportunity to acquire the BBC broadcast plays of all the George Smiley novels as plays has provided the opportunity to engage again and yesterday I experienced the two disk 90 minute Call for the Dead and which I had previously appreciated as the 1966 film the Deadly Affair with James Mason as Smiley, Harriet Anderson as his ex wife, Simon Signoret at the wife the allegedly Foreign Office suicide Samuel Fennan and Maximillan Schell as his former spy and friend Dieter Frey. Given such an outstanding cast which also included Lynn Redgrave, Roy Kinnear and Harry Andrews as Mendal it was difficult to imagine that the BBC production could match the film where I have the 2006 produced DVD and believe I saw the original in Theatre as well as subsequently on TV. It is good especially the performance of Eleanor Bron as Mrs Fennan and Kenneth Graham as Inspector Mendal. No one can compare with the Alec Guinness interpretation of George Smiley but Simon Russell Beale does as good job as does Harry Goodman as Dieter Frey.

The story was therefore familiar rather like a classical music symphony such as the New World or the Beethoven Choral but enjoyable for a Friday night nevertheless reminding of Radio days long long ago.

George is asked to interview Fennan following receipt by his masters of a letter denouncing the civil servant as a spy. They walk in St James Park and George is impressed with the man who he likes and has no reservations about dismissing the letter without further investigation. The man is then reported to have committed suicide and his wife claims that the interview with George was the cause. George is under fire from his masters, (as usual) and when he visits the widow he takes a phone call, expecting one for himself and this sets the trail which leads to uncovering what really happened as well as to his own past as a field agent in post war and wartime Germany and the problems he had with marrying a woman who in the days of the forties to sixties would be described as free and then liberated as well as a minor aristocrat and who had the social class background that George lacked.

He enlists the help of local police man Inspector Mendal due to retire and thus commences the start of their relationship when he turns to the Inspector for refuge when an attempt is made on his life.

The story? Well Fennan was as George believed innocent and had in fact sent the letter provoking the investigation himself because he suspected that his wife was taking copies of his papers and passing them to someone. I am not sure if he tied this in with her regular visit to the local theatre company where she always sat in the same seat bringing a violin case with her and sitting with a gentleman who also occupied the same seat.

It was when George made the mistake of going for the walk that he was spotted by a former agent of his that the decision was taken for Fennan to die and for the attempt on life of George. It is the early morning alarm phone call that triggers the uncovering because Mendal establishes that it was made by the husband and not the wife as she claimed because she found it difficult to sleep and lost track of time as a consequence.

In the film we learn that Dieter was one of the men with whom his wife had an affair when he came to the UK after the War and it was one of his men Munk who had been the regular contact with the wife recruited after her experiences with the Nazi’s and who had killed her husband when they realised what was happening. Dieter had established a trading company in London as a cover for his operation. In the BBC Play I thought the closeness of the relationship between Smiley and Dieter was brought out more strongly as well as their mutual respect as the best of the best at their black art. It also brilliantly expresses the anguish felt by both men as Dieter presses Smiley to walk away than be killed and Smiley’s sense of loss and failure when it is Dieter than dies. His wife is an image in his mind throughout until the end with flashbacks in the film and as someone to talk to. A living conscience as well as memory, in his single loneliness in the radio play. In both as I assume the original book text, she contacts him saying her latest fling has not worked out and wants him back and he goes to collect her, as well as brining his career as a spook to an end and along with Mendal going to retirement of a kind. I almost forgot that he sets up a trap for the wife and Dieter at a production of a Shakespeare play in the West End during which they realise the position and the wife is killed within sight of the audience and the players.