The Team Behind The Night Manager Is Working On A New Le Carré Series

From Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to The Night Manager to The Little Drummer Girl, you can’t go wrong with a John le Carré adaptation. Next up is one of the late author’s final novels, A Legacy of Spies – the second to last novel to be published before his death in 2020, and his third to last novel after Silverview (2021) was released posthumously.

Connected to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), we return to characters we know – Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam – thrust into the glaring spotlight of modern scrutiny. While production is still in early phases, one star has reportedly been cast: Succession alum Matthew Macfadyen will take on the role of a young George Smiley, a character played by everyone from Gary Oldman to Simon Russell Beale, Rupert Davies to Denholm Elliott in le Carré adaptations past.

Here’s everything we know so far about Legacy of Spies.

John Le Carré’s Legacy Of Spies: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

Produced by two of le Carré’s four sons – Stephen and Simon Cornwell – under their production company, The Ink Factory, Legacy of Spies was first rumoured in spring 2025. But we now have official word from the BBC, which has teamed up with MGM+ on international distribution of the series.

The Ink Factory is also behind the BBC’s 2018 adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl, starring Michael Shannon, Alexander Skarsgård and Florence Pugh, as well as the channel’s lauded adaption of The Night Manager – starring Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander and Elizabeth Debicki – which has two sequel seasons in the works. However, the brand also occasionally strays from its le Carré roots: The Ink Factory is also behind Fighting With My Family (2019), Hotel Artemis (2018) and more.

Legacy of Spies takes its title from one of le Carré’s later novels (but drops the ‘A’), though we’re told the series will predominantly draw on The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1963), with scripts penned by his son Stephen Cornwell with Clarissa Ingram. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is one of the author’s very best (and bestselling) novels, but it has only been adapted twice: first into a film in 1965 and most recently for the stage by David Eldridge. But as Simon and Stephen Cornwell explain in a joint statement, the BBC series will also mine action from the book it takes it title from (which is a sequel of sorts), and other works in the prolific writer’s oeuvre.

‘This project is in many ways the most ambitious and all-encompassing adaptation of le Carré’s work to date,’ the Cornwell brothers explain, ‘taking our father’s best-known and most-loved 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 shaped the one we live in today.’

George Smiley (Macfadyen) will be at the centre, a quintessential le Carré character who features in nine of his novels: as a protagonist in Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley’s People and Karla’s Choice (the last a continuation story penned by le Carré’s son Nick Harkaway), and a supporting character in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Looking Glass War, The Secret Pilgrim and A Legacy of Spies. ‘To have Matthew embody this operational mastermind, a man both vulnerable and dangerous […] is a great coup,’ the Cornwell brothers say.

What Will Happen In Legacy Of Spies?

Like many le Carré stories, we’re told Legacy of Spies will plummet us in the midst of the Cold War, charting Smiley’s overarching quest for his nemesis, the Russian master-spy Karla. Set in Cold War era Britain, East and West Germany and Czechoslovakia, the series will open in the shadow of the newly-erected Berlin Wall as British intelligence officer Alec Leamas (Charlie Hunnam) watches his last agent being shot dead by East German sentries.

For Leamas the Cold War is over, and he is facing two dire realities: retirement or, worse, a desk job. But then Control offers him a surprising opportunity for revenge, to trap the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service, Mundt, using himself (in the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent) as the bait. Pulling the strings in the background is Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.

Matthew Macfadyen Is George Smiley

As far as casting goes, there’s one name at the top of the bill thus far: Matthew Macfadyen. While Macfadyen has enjoyed a pretty consistent career since the late ‘90s, he is best known for two very different roles: as tortured stoic upper class Brit Mr Darcy in 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, and as American class-climber Tom Wambsgans in HBO’s phenomenal hit, Succession. But Macfadyen is no stranger to a spy drama: he’s also known on British screens for his role as Tom Quinn in Spooks, while in 2021 he starred opposite Colin Firth in Operation Mincemeat.

George Smiley is one of le Carré’s most famous characters, a purposeful antithesis to one of British fiction’s most famous spies, James Bond. Smiley is described as ‘breathtakingly ordinary’, a middle-aged, short and podgy man who hides ruthless cunning behind his ill-fitting clothes. (The challenge is on for Macfadyen, who towers at 6’2”.)

Intended as an ‘antidote’ to Bond, Smiley joins le Carré’s unheroic British intelligence workforce, who engage in psychological rather than physical drama and are keenly aware of the moral ambiguity of their work during the Cold War.

The Cast

Joining Macfadyen in Legacy of Spies is Charlie Hunnam as Alec Leamas, the British intelligence officer navigating a divided Germany. Despite his British roots, Hunnam is best known for his roles stateside, most notably starring in Sons of Anarchy and Monster: The Ed Gein Story. That said, his breakout role was in Russell T Davies’ 1999 series Queer as Folk; Legacy of Spies is his first major British TV role since then.

They will be joined by Daniel Brühl and Devrim Lingnau Islamoğlu, though the rest of the cast is still to-be-confirmed. Here are the roles we know so far:

• Matthew Macfadyen as George Smiley
• Charlie Hunnam as Alec Leamas, British intelligence officer
• Daniel Brühl as Jens Fielder, East German spy
• Devrim Lingnau Islamoğlu as Doris Quinz, aka Agent Tulip

Is It Based On A True Story?

The unique facet of le Carré’s work is that it is all underpinned by the author’s very real experience working as a spy for British intelligence in the 1950s and ‘60s. Other than that, Legacy of Spies is entirely fictitious – or at least that’s what they’d have us think…

Release Date

No news just yet on when we’ll actually get to see Legacy of Spies, but we think there will be a while to wait. Check back here for updates.