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Last night I found I could get to the full episodes again... I'm pretty sure, anyway... where I'd only been able to get to almost full episodes before. BUT thing about binge-watching tv series is one becomes SO bloody sick of the intros and outros one could scream... and usually does.
So I was given great relief by the advent of the ten-hour version, with both Tinker Tailor and Smiley's People. Thing is: that version cut out more than an hour. Yeah, intros and outros were a hunk of that, but there are scenes missing and parts of scenes, bits of atmosphere, spots in the original that gave one time to contemplate, do the math, soak it in. So the ten-hour version is a fairly ruthlessly-edited, don't blink sort of watch.
And crucial bits ARE conveyed by the actors' faces alone, especially if you're watching the edited version.
This was one of the few times in all history that tv or cinema did better work than the author — since that author was SO clunky and SO infuriatingly flavorless I could NOT stomach his books... and that is saying A LOT. Ptooey. Great plots, set on our table like the world's worst cook might serve us on Thanksgiving... or like having tepid tofu KFC, with lumpy gravy for Thanksgiving dinner.
Much as I loathe going hungry, I never could make it very far into one of his books. And I'm not being a snob! I've read plenty of airport paperbacks and enjoyed them straight through. AND, little-known fact: I prefer listening even to reading or watching. So I go heavy to the documentaries these days, because you almost never have to look at them.
This one, of course, you need to see and hear, until you've seen it and heard it so many times you can get in bed and just see the scenes in your mind's eye while listening, or look at it with the sound off and recite the words... which maybe runs up the flag for why I hate that guy's writing so much. My mind's eye AND ear want nothing to do with him. WHY waste time on it then?
You don't. You wait for someone who can endure the cold left brain experience and turn it into a masterpiece with mostly the best actors the other side of the pond ever had to offer. Maybe you could call that artistic patience, or just plain patience, an art I vowed to perfect and still fail too often.
I don't have a smartphone. My phone is dirt dumb and plugged into the wall. I don't have a laptop or tablet. I have a desktop computer that is plugged into the wall. So those intros and outros might kill me if I have to do this from bed. This might not be any sort of problem for YOU, though.
Whatever, whatever, whatever.
It's covered on this playlist. You can do the ten-hour edited version on top; the four-hour TTSS that comes second and then bump down SP in the episodes below it; or start at the third video and watch each full episode one at a time. It works miracles for people with sleep circuses and/or epic stress difficulty. I mean, Alec Guinness by himself, does that, but the casting, even though it changes for the sequel, is so impeccable you might want to cry for your ungrateful youth.
I hope the bastards at YouBube will now leave these alone. They had their fun.
pipe up any time....
