I love these radio dramas so much. I honestly can’t remember if (an imagined) Ann serves as a narrator in the original book, but she does in the dramas to great effect.

I can’t listen to Call for the Dead without thinking about the ambiguous continuity of the Smileyverse. On one hand, Smiley feels like a one-off character here, and it’s weird to start him off as resigning from the Circus when Le Carré will want to use that to greater effect later on. At the same time, this sets up so much of the world that Le Carré will later flesh out, so it’s a fantastic beginning of the franchise.

I appreciate that the radio adaptation doesn’t try to reconcile the conflicts and disparities that will come up in future works. It just takes the story as is—and it’s a good story, so I can’t complain.

Also, Simon Russell Beale is my definitive Smiley—though maybe because I’ve listened to these so many times.