First of all - the acting is great. But: If you're a John LeCarre fan looking for something like "Tinker Tailor...", you might end up seriously dissatisfied. That was exactly my problem when I began to watch the first episode. I felt betrayed by the writers: The character Joe Lamme looks almost like Peter Guillam played by Benedict Cumberbatch. The chief of MI5 is called Daddy and nobody knows his real name (like Control in "Tinker Tailor..."). His wife probably doesn't know he's working for MI5 (Control used to have a wife who thought he works as a postman - it's one little sentence in one of LeCarre's books). The evil KGB guy is called Odin (not Karla) and nobody knows his real name. DC Jim Fenchurch is basically Smiley's right hand man Mendel. Joe and Jim try to figure out who the mole is - they pull cards as a symbol for each of their colleagues. There is a mole. This alone would not be upsetting, but then there are goofs like: Joe tells Jim that he will use a workname - aloud, behind the suspect's door. Wendy is shaking all the time, I wonder how she passed the job interview. One scene is almost an exact remake of a scene from the first X-Files movie. I could go on. But it's really pointless, because obviously this series were not made for LeCarre fans. It's simply a well-made spy thriller that uses visual language of Thomas Alfredson's movie and borrows elements from genre classics.
