THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY

Can heartbreak and spy craft exist side by side? Of course they can, in the BBC’s penetrating full-cast adaptation of the 1977 sequel to TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY. The time is the end of the Vietnam War, and duplicity and double agents have devastated George Smiley’s Circus. Something has to be done to get the group back on its feet. Smiley, played by Simon Russell Beale, plots to trap his Russian nemesis, Karla, with a plan that involves employing a seldom-used Far East agent. Each vocal performance, especially Hugh Bonneville’s turn as the “schoolboy” Jerry Westerby, is so naturalistic and so convincing that the listener will ache at the damage that can be wrought when love, betrayal, and expedience become the deadliest weapons in the spy game. B.P. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2011]