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The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
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The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
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Publisher's Summary
The complete collection of acclaimed BBC Radio dramas based on John le Carré's best-selling novels, starring Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, thrilling spy novels. 'Call for the Dead' is the first Smiley novel, which sees him looking into an apparent suicide only to uncover a murderous conspiracy; 'A Murder of Quality' finds Smiley investigating a murder in a private school; 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' introduces Alec Leamas, a British intelligence officer whose East Berlin network is in tatters; 'The Looking Glass War' features former spy Fred Leiser, lured back from retirement to investigate a claim that Soviet missiles are being installed close to the West German border; 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' is the first book in the Karla trilogy, and sees Smiley searching for a mole who has infiltrated the Circus; 'The Honourable Schoolboy' sees Smiley determined to destroy his nemesis, Karla, and his spy networks; 'Smiley's People' finds George Smiley called out of retirement to exorcise some Cold War ghosts from his clandestine past; and 'The Secret Pilgrim' sees Smiley invited to dine with the eager new recruits at the Circus. He offers them his thoughts on espionage and, in doing so, prompts a former colleague to re-examine his own eventful secret life.
Editorial reviews
What listeners say about The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 21-10-2018
Le Carre dramatisation at its best
Le Carre’s best characters brought to life in their original context - from London to Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Vientiane, and the jungles of Cambodia - the stories are compelling, the performances convincing. Brilliant and clumsy espionage from the 1940s to 1990s. Listening theatre!
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 02-10-2017
Good Radio Play
BBC Radio Play, Good cast, Good Actor Playing Smiley. As with all abridged works i yearn for the detail. but overall a good listen. Particularly if you have not read the original works.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 01-06-2019
A classic
Of course I read it in my youth but it was great to relive the stories with these superb dramatizations.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lavinia Gordon
- 09-02-2020
Simon Russell Beale is outstanding as Smiley.
The conversations with Anne work extremely well. Great audio quality. The actor voicing Bill Hayden is also perfect.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- David
- 23-04-2021
Classic Storytelling
You can't go wrong here. Very well acted . Hugely entertaining.
I don't think there is a better espionage storytelling author than LeCarre.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- M.Chuzzlewit
- 27-10-2016
Compelling listening, great dramatisation.
I was really engrossed in this cold war espionage series. The writing is generally taut with some of the stories more compelling than others, but all were Top shelf in their field if a little fatalistic in tone, which may be an accurate reflection on the "craft' by a firmer operative. The only let down for me was in 'the honourable schoolboy's, in my opinion, the weakest of the Geaorge Smiley novels, where the Chinese, Vietnamese and American accents sounded jarringly inauthentic and contrived. The rest of the acting was excellent. Perhaps the BBC might have used a native-speaking actor for those parts.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Christine
- 17-11-2016
Engaging
This was, of course, brilliant because it
came from the famed BBC drama department. It was well produced and extremely well acted. However, I did find it a little confusing to follow at times and it required a lot of concentration to try and follow the story and which character was talking. I think I would have followed the stories better if I'd listened to a narration of the books rather than the interpretation of those stories through play.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Robert A Neill
- 19-07-2019
BBC drama at its English best
This is a masterful full cast dramatisation with beautiful English understatement that complements Le Carres’s master spy George Smiley’s understated approach to Cold War espionage. The
‘Bullfrog in a Sou’wester” threads his way through the internal intrigues of his own MI5 to weed out the the Russian spy in a great collection of about 17 hours of suspenseful drama, that largely differ but centre around the spy intrigues that get away from the James Bond Cannes glamour and Aston Martins. Instead it plays against the dreary realistic backdrop of post war England and Eastern Europe with only a black Humber from the staff car pool for transport!
It’s my go to audio book on a restless night, I can just about recite it. Congrats to the BBC for a wonderful full cast production which they do so well.And God bless Audible for making it available to buy the whole collection
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- alan riles
- 21-06-2021
Brilliant, even it was not Alec Guiness as Smiley!
As a longtime le Carre fan, I loved this. A couple of observations:-
1.confirms 'The Honourable Schoolboy' as the weak point of the Smiley trilogy. Hard to understand its relevance.
2.if you read/listen to nothing else pick 'The Spy who came in from the Cold' and its reprise 'A Legacy of Spies' (although not part of this audio collection) as the quintessential le Carre.
The Spy who came in from the Cold sits with Koestler's Darkness at Noon as genre-defining.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Jeremy
- 28-10-2017
A product Of it's time
I remember the days when the BBC dramsatised stories but they never work as well as a good narrator. The sound effects sound amateurish compared with a description of what is happening.
I live in Thailand part of the year and the use of almost comic Chinese accents for Thai people was especially jarring. Today these would be considered patronising and racist.
The stories themselves are quite good but some are depressing as the whistful memories of an old man
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6 people found this helpful