Adventures in Streaming: Gary Oldman, John Le Carre and a series worth sitting through ads for

National Post

26-06-2025

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Back in the '80s, before I became an entertainment journalist, I worked my way through university at a video distributor, that is, a company that sold movies, mostly on VHS tapes, to video stores around the province. For a movie-crazy guy, it was an interesting gig, with benefits including unlimited posters, screeners and merch.
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Few of those companies are around these days since physical media has been relentlessly downgraded due to the convenience of digital streaming.
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But one lesson I took from the marketing end of the home video business is the concept of 'piggybacking.' The word describes the art of selling one title using another title. To use a terrible '80s-era example, video marketing would tell you that if you loved Louis Gosset in his Oscar-winning turn in An Officer and a Gentleman, you'll love him playing a veteran pilot in the Canadian produced Top Gun knock-off Iron Eagle.
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Slipstreaming is a column devoted to taking that concept to streaming services. If you like that, maybe you'll like this. Let me be your algorithm.
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For example, if you liked seeing Gary Oldman play John Le Carre's legendary spy George Smiley in the movie Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011), you'll love seeing him tweak the character outrageously in the series Slow Horses (Apple TV), bringing his wry, Oldman-esque aplomb to the character of flatulent, put-to-pasture spymaster Jackson Lamb. The seemingly decrepit Lamb is in charge of Slough House, a purgatory-like espionage station populated by agents that have, in one way or another, messed up an assignment.
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With each of its four seasons based on a novel by Mick Herron, the series updates Le Carre's espionage universe with slick technology and slicker action. Unlike Le Carre, women have a more active role in the story, especially in the case of Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), an MI-5 director frequently at odds with the wily Lamb.
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If the show's internecine intrigue captivates, you may want to return to the obvious source of Herron's inspiration.
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The 1979 TV series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (BritBox and also available for free on YouTube) starred Alec Guinness as Smiley, just two years after he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977) and you would never know it. Guinness looks pouchy and depressed, like a Prufrockian bureaucrat. But he has talents, which is why Smiley is brought out of retirement to find a Russian mole in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, a.k.a. The Circus.