Called out of retirement to settle the affairs of a friend, Smiley finds his old organization, the Circus, so overwhelmed by political considerations that it doesn't want to know what happened. He begins to follow up the clues of his friends past days, discovering that the clues lead to a high person in the Russian Secret service, and a secret important enough to kill for.
When "Madame Ostrakova" (Eileen Atkins) is accosted by a man as she tries to board a bus, we discover that she has a secret Soviet past that saw her flee, leaving her daughter in Moscow. Faced with a difficult choice, she contacts the one man who might be able to help. That's "Gen. Vladimir" (Curd Jürgens) who just happens to have some links with the once again retired "Smiley" (Sir Alec Guinness) who is drafted out of his intellectual slumbers to piece together a mystery that involves his own wife "Lady Ann" (Siân Phillips), his arch nemesis "Karla", this woman and her abandoned daughter. John Le Carré had an hand in adapting his own story here, and again there is a very strong and considered effort from a Sir Alec who has very much moulded his own characterisation of this patient and wily spy-master. Sadly, though, unlike "Tinker Tailor...", this one lacks that sense of the enigmatic. To be honest, it is pretty clear who is whom and the dots are far easier for us to join with this story. The supporting cast deliver well with starring contributions from both Beryl Reid and the always reliable Michael Lonsdale; Jürgens brings a gravitas to his role and Michael Byrne (the new iteration of "Guillam") and Anthony Bate's "Lacon" also contribute well as the story shines a different light on the ways in which the Soviet manipulation machine menacingly controlled it's foreign operatives. It's well paced if you like your drama more cerebral, there's an effective paucity of dialogue and plenty of opportunity for audience participation in doing some deducing of our own. It's not quite so good a sequel - that's really because it's not so good a follow-up story, but it's still a compellingly photographed six-parter that allows some of Britain's best character actors to do their stuff with a script that teases the riddle from the plot nicely.