Yet another set of John le Carré books are to be adapted, this time for television.
The series “Legacy of Spies” has been picked up at the BBC in the UK and MGM+ in the US. The series has started production early 2026, with the first season adapting the smash hit le Carré novel “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” while also drawing on material from the 2017 novel “A Legacy of Spies”. The eight-part thriller is showrun and written by Stephen Cornwell, le Carré’s son, and directed by Michael Lennox as well as Academy Award nominee Claudia Llosa. Simon Cornwell also serves as executive producer for the series
Two-time Emmy-winner Matthew Macfayden will be playing legendary spy George Smiley. Joining him are Emmy nominee Charlie Hunnam as maverick British intelligence officer Alec Leamas, BAFTA nominee Daniel Bruhl as East German spy Jens Fielder, Devrim Lingnau Islamoglu as Doris Quinz, aka Agent Tulip, Agnes O’Casey as Liz Gold, Felix Kammerer as Hans-Dieter Mundt, Dans Stevens as Bill Haydon, Joe Alwyn as MI6 agent Jim Prideaux, and Emmy nominee Hugh Laurie as spy agency boss Control.
“This project is in many ways the most ambitious and all-encompassing adaptation of le Carré’s work to date, taking our father’s best-known and most-loved most character – the complex and brilliant spymaster George Smiley – and using this medium as a canvas to chart his story as he moves through a world which culturally and politically shapes the one we live in today,” said Simon and Stephen Cornwell. “To have Matthew embody this operational mastermind, a man both vulnerable and dangerous, alongside the brilliant talent of Charlie, Daniel and Devrim, is a great coup. We are thrilled the series has found its home with the BBC and MGM+ and to be collaborating alongside Malte and the Amusement Park team, while having Graham’s wisdom, vision and deft touch helping us guide this project – bringing his own mastery of the genre alongside that of le Carré’s.”
As with le Carré’s previous novels Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, the novel features the fictitious British intelligence organisation, “The Circus”, and its agents George Smiley and Peter Guillam. Published in 1963, the description begins in the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, as Alec Leamas watches his last agent shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, a senior British intelligence officer in Berlin, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service, with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.
As with previous adaptations, this one is bound to be yet another success.
