Marcia Wheeler: A Life in BBC Television - Part Two

The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Scheduling is a sort of three-dimensional chess game of availability of actors, of locations, of tides or leaves, of maximum permitted working hours, and very often tight transmission deadlines. - Marcia Wheeler.

Welcome to the second part of our interview with Marcia Wheeler - you can find the first part of the interview here. Marcia worked at the BBC from the mid-sixties until 1994 and, crucially, she worked as Production Unit Manager/Production Associate on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People. 

In this part of the interview, she discusses her work on The Mayor of Casterbridge (1978) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979). Marcia shares new information about the filming of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, including:

• How she almost ended up replacing John Nathan-Turner as Production Unit Manager on Dr Who, and nearly did not work on Tinker Tailor at all.
• The challenges she had to overcome in terms of scheduling, and why she decided to hide enough money in the budget for two extra weeks of filming.
• Why she and the director, John Irvin, argued against an effort to set the series in 1973, the year the book was written.
• The inside story on why filming in the Loch Ard forest in Scotland went ‘off track’.
• The identity of the actor originally cast as Karla, had the prison scenes been filmed in Lisbon as planned.
• The dilemma Chris Wimble (editor) faced when cutting the scenes between Sir Alec Guinness and Nigel Stock.
• What happened when she arranged an early private screening of Tinker Tailor for just John le Carré and Sir Alec Guinness.

Read on to discover more...

Jonathan Moran (JM): You worked on The Mayor of Casterbridge in 1978, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in 1978/79. What is interesting about these two productions is that Casterbridge was shot entirely on video and Tinker Tailor was all on film. What was your experience of making these series and the contrasts between shooting on film and video?

Marcia Wheeler (MW): Martin Lisemore and I had set up Casterbridge together. Martin believed that television should use video, not film, so he did all his location work on video. Tragically, Martin was killed in a car crash halfway through setting up the series. Obviously, there was an underlying sadness throughout the production, but working on the series was one of the happiest experiences I had.

Dennis Potter had written the scripts, and he sent in all seven scripts together. This was nerve-wracking for the script editor, but Potter liked to send the whole thing complete. His hands were already very crippled with arthritis but he'd written the script in perfect television format, letter by letter with a fountain pen. You could have photocopied it and issued it to the actors. I kept my photocopy of the script for a long time.

Martin and I read the scripts, and we thought they were very good but we both realised there was too much material for the time allocated for location work. While we were discussing what to do about this, Planning rang up and said they were really pushed for studios in the autumn and how would we feel about doing the whole thing on location as an Outside Broadcast (OB). Martin said yes immediately - then we had to work out how, because nobody had ever done a serial entirely on OB before. 

The BBC had done a series this way before though - the second and third series of Survivors. I had a look at their shooting pattern but they were shooting with different directors who would come in and do an episode. Quite how they did it with the union regulations, I don’t know, but I think they had a six-day shoot. The OB people worked fifty hours a week, so they must have worked across weeks to get a six-day week out of them. 

I thought six-day weeks over seven episodes would be a killer, so I had to work out something different. Martin thought we could shoot it in ten weeks and he told Planning this. I can still remember standing over what must have looked like a giant noughts and crosses board, thinking, can we really do that? Eventually, I went back to Planning and said I thought that all this time without a break was too much, which was something I had learned from The Long Chase. Both Peter Grimwade and I knew that if your filming weeks go on for too long, everybody gets so tired they make mistakes. They also get to the point where they are focussed on survival, rather than the work. 

With The Mayor of Casterbridge, I managed to negotiate a two-week gap around the middle. Eventually, we did six weeks, then the gap, and then four more weeks. Also, I thought, if things have gone wrong, it would give us a bit of re-shoot time. It also bought time for the design department to dress Corfe. When I was on location, I can remember driving over the crest of a hill, and there was a big car park at the bottom, just outside Corfe. There were seven massive BBC artic lorries, side by side by side across the whole car park. I thought, there goes the rest of the design budget, not to mention transport!

The first day of recording there was dense fog, in which a film camera could not have functioned. Because it was Outside Broadcast on the video camera, we got the actors emerging from the fog and it was a perfect opening. (see below). 

It all worked so well because I planned it that David was never actually shooting more than four and a half days a week. We had a fortnightly pattern, so that the middle Saturday was a stand-by day, but if it wasn't needed, then everyone had the weekend off. We could then call actors down at the weekend to rehearse, and the crew came back on Monday morning - it worked perfectly.  

We had rehearsals before we started and David also wrote a camera script for the whole series before we shot anything. He and Frances Alcock went off to the location on their own and looked at every single shot. There's a seven-minute tracking shot in Casterbridge, which is an argument between Anna Massey and Alan Bates, who were both very experienced screen actors. The cameraman was using a handheld camera over his shoulder, so he walked forward and the camera looked back. The actors were able to stay within the confines of the shot. David, who was a clever director, wanted them to play the scene in an emotional arc, without the interruption of cutting. 

It took all morning to set up because they just cabled out until they could not get a picture anymore, and that was one end of the shot. The cables were then pulled up as they walked, and right at the end, the camera did a turn onto a single shot.  When that shot was being taken, I was on a road beyond the village, stopping any passing traffic during the take. Anybody coming couldn't see what was going on, just me standing there with my radio. The locals, by that time, were all so well trained. There was a moment where they were not shooting so I took the opportunity to do a spot of blackberrying in a hedge. The driver of a car saw me in the hedge with my radio, pulled up and leaned out of the window to ask if they should be stopping.

JM: Were you made welcome by the Corfe locals?

MW: Absolutely - we threw a party for them in their village hall, and they gave us another party at the end. It was lovely. I have a wonderful photo of the cast and crew at the end of filming. On the left is Marion McDougall, who was the senior Production Manager on Smiley's People. Sadly I am not in the photo, as I was on the phone trying to solve a problem about another production!

At the time I was doing Casterbridge and Tinker Tailor, I was also doing The Duchess of Duke Street and writing offers on other things as well. Tinker Tailor started in the autumn, but because it overshot, Tinker was still going on when I started work on Testament of Youth. This is why I was only on location when I really needed to be, because I was trying to be in the studio for these other projects, when we were doing studio recordings. 

JM: Am I right in thinking that you first met Jonathan Powell on The Mayor of Casterbridge?

MW: Yes, he came for the technical recce. Jonathan inherited me as an associate on the classic serials. He and I never got on terribly well when he was a producer, and I was an associate. Maybe, he didn't want to inherit too much and perhaps he wanted to set up a new way of working. In a curious way, we got on a lot better when I was Departmental Manager, and he was Head of Department. He opened up a little bit more, and perhaps he’d just got used to me by then, or I’d got used to him.

He had decided that for Tinker Tailor there would be a 14-week shoot, in two blocks of seven weeks with a one week gap in the middle - this was before an offer document was written. I was the Production Unit Manager and it was my job to write the Budget for Offers. I did not think seven episodes, much of it at night and with some difficult sequences, could possibly be done in the time. Jonathan said he had a really fast Director whose work he knew. I knew that the speed of shooting at night is largely dictated by the Lighting Cameraman, not the Director. If the Director had been really fast, and the production very lucky, it just might have been done in 16 weeks, though I thought 18 was more realistic.

So I wrote the offer, and hid in it enough money for two extra weeks of filming. I did not think that was enough, but I didn’t think I could hide anymore without Planning noticing. I’d written most of it, not in terms of days, but in terms of extra hours because of all the night shooting. I'd been able to conceal a lot of money in extra hours - by God, we needed it. 

After I had written the offer, I remember Brian Spiby, Series and Serials Organiser, called all the associates together, and he was swapping everybody around - I wasn’t sure why he was doing this. Had he decided to stir us all up, or had one or more producers said, “I don’t want this associate, I want someone different, but I don’t want to say so”!

Brian could have picked us off one by one, but confronting us all together was a big mistake. He put me on Doctor Who, and I sat there not saying much, thinking, I don't know if I really have an awful lot to offer Doctor Who, as I’m much more of a book specialist, but it is what it is. John Nathan-Turner was not going to part with Doctor Who, though! I think Brian tried to put Chris D’Oyly John on Tinker Tailor. Now, Chris was doing Poldark, and he really liked Poldark, so he did not want to move. Nobody wanted to move, and in the end, there was a kind of massive rebellion. He ended up with us all exactly where we'd started. 

Jonathan Powell and Betty Willingale in 1983

JM: Where do you think Jonathan Powell’s strengths lay?

MW: I thought Jonathan had two great talents. One of them was for putting things together. On Tinker Tailor, he brought le Carré and Guinness together. He brought Hopcraft and Irvin from independent television. He worked with everybody's agents and got the rights to the character of Smiley from Paramount. There was a kind of Mexican standoff going on between Paramount and le Carré about these rights, and he negotiated that impasse— he managed all that quite brilliantly. The other huge talent he had, I thought, was a tremendous gift for publicity, which the BBC was really not good at, especially at that time. He took that gift for publicity on with him when he became Head of Department and did the big autumn drama launches that he initiated. 

A lot of the time during Tinker Tailor he just wasn't around, but the Producer’s role was quite properly a detached one. It was much better for him to be away from the fray, judging whether the performances looked good or the tone and style of the series were being maintained. One of the skills of a good Producer was knowing when to be with the unit and when best not.

JM: Jonathan Powell assembled an incredible team. Were you at the meeting that they had at Lime Grove where Powell, le Carré, Guinness, Irvin, and Hopcraft reviewed all the scripts? 

MW: I was not there, but I knew about it. Betty Willingale, who was the script editor, should have been there, but she didn't go either. It was sad that she was excluded. 

JM: Why do you think someone with her experience was excluded? 

MW: I don't know, because she and Hopcraft were great pals. They knew each other very well.

JM: What were the challenges as filming approached?

MW: One of the early problems with the shooting of Tinker Tailor was about people working in different ways. John Irvin was used to saying everything to a First Assistant and not talking to anybody else. He was used to that First Assistant then being locked to his side the whole time. The BBC did not work like that, and I think you could quite legitimately say that Tinker Tailor was under-crewed. What happened was, because we all knew each other and we’d done all the different jobs, we just did whatever job was nearest and liaised with each other. So, I would work as an AFM or a Floor Assistant, if necessary. Sometimes if Tony Virgo or Peter Grimwade were away solving problems, Christabel Albery or Jeremy Silberston would be beside the camera.  

Marcia was Production Manager on the Doctor Who serial The Time Warrior in 1973. 

For this shot she was operating the boom pole, as the Sound Assistant was unavailable. 

We all swivelled round and did things as and when. It took John a while to adjust to this, and eventually he got to like it and appreciate how it worked. One of the problems with the ITV system was its rigidity. For example, they had Assistant Stage Managers who worked in rehearsal, but they weren't allowed to touch anything in the studio; that was all handled by another union. Nor were they allowed to go out and film; that was another union. My brother used to work for Yorkshire and he told me if you were a bloke, and a member of the right union, you started off in the post room and then ten years later you were an alcoholic Floor Manager! He was a kind of universal stand-by. So, some days he'd be delivering the post and another day he'd be the stand-by chippy. He said he would see people coming down the corridor with a distraught look on their faces, because they didn't know whether they should say ‘hello’ to him or not, because you would say hello to the chippy, but the postman didn't exist. 

You can see how somebody coming from one system to another might initially find it very difficult, and not know quite who they should talk to about what. At the BBC, it didn't matter - whatever John said to anybody, would automatically be channelled to whoever needed to know. Before John was comfortable with this, I believe there was a real possibility they were thinking of bringing in a new production team.

JM: What do you think would have happened if they had replaced the production team?

MW: I worked on something where the Director got the Assistant Designer thrown off. Nobody else who was any good from the Design Department wanted to take it on. They eventually found somebody too new to argue and put them on it. A terrible mistake was made about scenery measurements. A whole load of scenery turned up on location, which didn't fit into the space for it, because it was all two metres out. If they had replaced the production team on Tinker Tailor, only very inexperienced members of staff or freelancers would have come in. It would have been a total disaster. 

JM: Were there other obstacles to be overcome prior to filming?

MW: There was a lunch that Jonathan, Betty, John and I had together at Albertine's. There was a big argument going on because Jonathan, who had done his research, felt all of the top people in the Circus would have retired years ago if they'd been in high positions in the war. He wanted to set the series back in time to make it more plausible - not by very much, but by just a few years. I was appalled by this because it would have cost as much as making it Dickensian, and most viewers would have thought that we'd just had it on the shelf for three years. 

Fortunately, John Irvin and I entered into an alliance because he wanted to make it absolutely topical. In other words, if we’re making it this year and there are new cars on screen, he wanted to get next year's plates on the cars. This was much easier to manage. John Irvin and I won that argument.

JM: Do you know if John le Carré or Sir Alec Guinness were supportive of this idea?

MW: I don’t, but I suspect Jonathan would have said to them he was setting the series in the year the novel was written, 1973, and I can see them being supportive of that. 

JM: You started filming in Portugal - is it correct that the Karla prison scenes were due to be filmed out there as well?

MW: We were going to film them in a working prison! It was decided at an early stage that it would have been ruinously expensive to fly even a small unit to Hong Kong, the setting of the Ricki Tarr section in the novel. Le Carré was happy for it to be relocated to Lisbon. We had cast Leon Eagles as Karla, and he and Guinness were due to fly out to Portugal to film the prison scenes. 

Leon Eagles in A Dog's Ransom (1978)

JM: They would have been Guinness’s first scenes as Smiley if filming had taken place. What happened?

MW: As it turned out, Leon Eagles was not well, and they also had terrible weather in Portugal and fell behind. They elbowed that scene, and it became one of the battles I had with Austen Spriggs. We spent ages trying desperately to find a location that would work for those scenes, and we couldn’t find anywhere. In the end, I decided we had to film them at Ealing, and he hated that and wanted nothing to do with it. His assistant designed that set. I think the studio setting was a great help to Tony Pierce-Roberts because he had to light Alec and make him look a lot younger - that was easier in a stage setting. Patrick Stewart was playing Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Aldwych Theatre at the time, so we could shoot him during the day, and he could nip down on the Central Line and perform in the evening. 

JM: What was Austen Spriggs like to work with?

MW: I liked Austen. He was a world-class set dresser, but he hated sets. He would do almost anything to avoid a set. He loved working on location and he turned down loads of locations because he was really picky. He wanted to do as little as possible to the location when he found it. He nearly started World War III when we were doing Smiley’s People! They were on a recce in Berlin, and the political situation at that time was quite tense. He went too far onto a bridge, and suddenly a machine gun swivelled round and was pointing at him. I think Marion McDougall yanked him back to safety. It was probably around this time that we decided not to film in Berlin and ended up in Nottingham.

JM: After Portugal, you were in Scotland for the next block of filming. What challenges did you face filming in Aberfoyle?

MW: That was a nightmare location, which Austen and John Irvin chose. I think they must have escaped from Peter Grimwade during a recce, because he would certainly have stopped them. The location in the forest was in a low bit with these deep ditches either side. There were also steep banks on either side, and a track that ran along the top. There was no turning point on the track, and this was slippery and dangerous at the best of times.

Peter Grimwade on location for The Long Chase in 1971 or 1972

Peter Grimwade and I insisted that the only vehicles to use lower track were the action vehicles, the camera car, and sound— nobody else. Peter and I worked out a list of how the vehicles lined up on the track, and the generator was supposed to go in first on the higher track. The Sparks didn't want to lay cables down the wooded slope, so they took the generator along the lower track, and it went straight off into this deep ditch. We couldn't get another generator in Scotland. We couldn't get one up from London without it taking two days. We lost the night shoot because of that. So basically, we had to get the generator out of the ditch. Obviously, it was a big vehicle, fully filled with fuel. Tony Pierce-Roberts and I spent the next morning in the hotel manager's office, with the phone book and the phone, ringing every crane hire business in Scotland. We needed a really big crane to lift the weight of the generator, but it also needed to be flexible enough to get in and out of the track. 

Eventually, we struck lucky and found a crane that was on its way to an oil rig in Aberdeen. These were obviously the days before mobile phones, and the chap at the crane hire firm said the driver was supposed to be calling in next time he had a meal break, and they were hoping to divert him to us. The crane arrived, and I remember standing and watching the operation. They put brailing lines on the generator. The crane lifted it up, swung it across, and then the brailing lines were used to make sure it landed precisely on the track. Barbara Franc filmed all this because we needed to let Ealing know what had been done. While she was filming, somebody nudged me and said, “I bet that's the most expensive shot in the production”.
 
The shot was never going to appear anywhere, but it probably was because we'd lost the night shoot. The loss of the night shoot meant we were under real pressure, as we had to be in Glasgow for Sunday morning for the street scenes. The next night, we were filming in this ghastly location in the forest, and it poured with rain - these were really difficult shooting conditions. One of the electricians was sent back to London with trench foot. People fell into the ditches; it was just a nightmare. The caterers weren't anywhere near us. I remember marching the extras by torchlight on a 10-15 minute walk from the caterer’s van. We didn't finish, which was why we needed to shoot additional footage in Black Park towards the end of filming.

JM: You were based in Cork Street for a couple of months filming all the Circus interiors. Why did filming fall behind there?

MW: We started off in Cork Street with a sort of work to rule by the film crew and anyone else based at Ealing Film Studios. Then there was a period of time over Christmas and into January, where they were totally on strike and we shot nothing. I can remember struggling with the schedule, so Peter and I spent an evening in the office going through it. We decided when we thought the strike would end, and we did a complete schedule from that time. In case we were wrong, and it went on longer than expected, we did a first week that could be lifted out and put at the end. 

I think we were right within two days, but of course, other things went wrong and it was continually rewritten. Scheduling is a sort of three-dimensional chess game of availability of actors, of locations, of tides or leaves, of maximum permitted working hours, and very often tight transmission deadlines. The basic structure that we worked out that evening was essentially what we did. Things always get changed because of the weather or somebody's ill, and we had serious problems with actors' availability, particularly those who were in stage shows. 

Once we were underway filming again in Cork Street, things went well because it was a controlled location and we had a massive amount of preset lighting. During the work to rule, the crew didn't join us until 10 o'clock because they clocked in at 9.30 and then they travelled in. In that time, the actors rehearsed. So they just have to do a run-through for Tony Pierce-Roberts to check the lighting, go into makeup to be patted down, and they could do the scene. We were actually shooting about three and a half minutes a day, even with them disappearing off at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It was amazing. 

We had a Christmas tree in the Production Office at Cork Street. I remember making a fairy for the top of the tree. It was a Tinkerbell holding a red shiny bauble to represent the 'red light and bell' used in film studios to indicate filming. We actually had a red light rig at Cork Street. I know Jeremy Silberston kept Tinkerbell for years afterwards.

Jeremy Silberston with Frances Alcock in the Production Office at Threshold House

JM: Tony Virgo talked to me about some of the challenges of filming in Bywater Street. What do you remember about it?

MW: The parking in Bywater Street was an endless battle. I remember arriving very early in the morning with my then quite big car, which I parked badly to occupy as much space as possible. As other people left, I put out cones or dragged dustbins into the spaces, until Jeremy turned up with his car and some more cones to help. I couldn't stay all day as I had to go back to the office, but I returned for part of the night shoot. Tony did not mention that the wrong camera tracks had been sent from Ealing and we had to wait for the right ones. Graeme MacDonald, who was Head of Serials, lived in the next street. He turned up to watch and found us all standing around doing nothing! The timing of walking to the front door was also a problem for Alec, who did one take where he went up the steps, put the key in the lock and then realised it was the wrong door! It was one of those nights.

JM: Tinker Tailor has a very unique look to it. How was that achieved?

MW: Tony Pierce-Roberts was the cameraman and he'd adopted a particular high contrast technique, which was quite difficult anyway, in terms of lighting and balance. When people were tired, things went wrong, which is why we had to reshoot at least one scene, because the light levels didn't work when they got them out on rushes. 

I remember somebody saying to me at some huge meeting, how much they'd admired the economy of lighting on Tinker Tailor, to which I could only say, "you wouldn't say that if you’d seen the bills". It was effective, but it was also difficult, and it took a lot of light. It looks amazing though and it looks better on a film screen than it does on television. 

JM: When you were working on Tinker Tailor, were you aware that it was something special, or did that only become apparent later?

MW: It was pretty special because we’d got Sir Alec Guinness. It was unusual that we were filming such a modern novel. You could have questioned what it was doing in BBC2 Classics. At the time, I think we were all too busy and too tired to appreciate whether what we were making was special or not. But it was special for having Guinness.

JM: What was your take on him? 

MW: He’d been a star for over forty years. There was an aura about him that you could not mistake. He was the ultimate professional. We tried very hard never to call him suddenly for something. We always tried to give him time because he liked to be dead letter perfect on the text once he’d agreed it. We were all very nervous of him to start with. I remember the first day of shooting— he drank a cup of BBC coffee. God, a test of anybody! “He has even put his paper cup in the BBC rubbish sack!”

I remember talking to his agent and asking what kind of treatment we should give him. He said, “the treatment you'd normally give to a leading actor”. I said, “we don't do Winnebagos”. He said, “that's fine, but where you can, arrange somewhere quiet for him to sit.” So we did. I leant my fold-up bed to the production for the duration, and that went round in a car, and it sat in his quiet place in case he should want a lie down. He was, in some respects, perfectly easy. 

I always felt, myself, that there was a line, and if you crossed it, then there would have been trouble. I don't think any of us ever did. You don't get to be a star for that long without knowing exactly who you are. The interesting thing about him is that there was a part of him that liked to be one of the lads. We had some drinks for a sound assistant who had got promoted - he went along with his tweed cap on, and said, “Call me Alec” and joined in with that. He could also walk down a street and disappear within three paces. In that respect, he would have been a perfect spy, because he could vanish. 

You know that scene where he has lunch with Nigel Stock - one of the best performances Nigel Stock ever gave, I think. Chris Wimble, one of the editors, said to me, you could have played the whole thing on Guinness. There was never a moment when he wasn't giving something. He said it was a real wrench because you just didn't want to cut off him. At the same time, there was Nigel Stock acting his socks off, and being wonderful. Chris said you could have done the whole thing with Nigel as a voiceover, because Guinness was so interesting. 

He knew exactly how to behave as a leading man. He took the entire cast and crew out to dinner at The Randolph Hotel - his agent told me this was his favourite hotel in Oxford. He met each person at the door, and he arranged that the men would move tables for each course. We were a small crew of only three or four tables, so he spent a course at each table. This was a trick he’d learned from the diplomats in Paris.

The other interesting thing about him was that he was a pure actor. He never stopped observing. We were already shooting in Evesham and we must have been late back to the hotel, because he arrived and there was nobody there. Normally, we tried to make sure there was someone to meet and greet him. So, he signed himself in and spent the evening in the bar - people watching. The next day, we were all very apologetic but he was fine with it. He was telling us all about the people he had watched. As he told us about them, he became them, just with a twitch of the shoulder and a little look. He would suddenly become a 40-year-old woman in a cocktail dress, or a beefy farmer. It was absolutely wonderful. By that time, he was pretty relaxed with us and happy to do that sort of thing. 

Michael Jayston, obviously, was a wonderful actor. I'd known him for a long time, because I worked with him when I was at Salisbury. Guinness used to wind him up. I remember Guinness telling Jayston that he had insisted they re-shoot the Beryl Reid scene - that was not true. We had to re-shoot that for technical reasons, all the close-ups were one stop out. We actually had to re-shoot more than just the affected shots. By the time we came to re-shoot it, there was a dispute with the prop hire company, so all the props had to be hired from a different company. The upshot of this was that we had to do the whole scene again - you couldn’t suddenly have the sofa changing colour. 

I thought some more about what Guinness had told Jayston later on. For some reason, even with all that star power and everything about him, he needed to demonstrate to Michael that he was powerful. He didn't need to, but he thought he needed to. At some level of his being, there was still some insecurity, which is probably what made him a great actor. Very curious - at first I thought he was having a bit of fun at Michael’s expense. But why? What was behind it and that's the question. 

JM: I guess that is part of the enigma of Alec Guinness. What happened between Guinness and Beryl Reid?

MW: The reason why they were not happy together was a total clash of acting styles. Alec would be dead letter perfect - he knew exactly what he was going to do. Beryl was intuitive; she came from left field. Every take was different. So she was making him work. He didn't know from one take to another what she was going to do. With her, you got a real portrait of a whole life in two scenes. 

I think he came up against someone who was acting him off the screen, and he did not like it. He was an actor, and, as I said before, at some level, I think all actors have some kind of insecurity, and if they haven't, they're not good actors.

JM: John Irvin said that Guinness rang him up in the middle of the night, worried that he hadn’t found Smiley. Do you think that was a reflection of his insecurity? 

MW: I don't feel he was that insecure - he had got Smiley by the time he did the first costume and makeup check. I could believe that Alec might have said at some point to John that he'd got a worry about something, because this is what actors do - they want reassurance. 

JM: There is a wonderful cast of supporting actors in Tinker Tailor. What do you remember about them?

MW: Ian Richardson was absolutely perfect because he has a feline quality. You could easily imagine him as bisexual for a start. Also, you could imagine him being deceitful for fun. That breakdown he has in the final episode is a tour de force of acting. He earned it by the way he had worked throughout. 

I knew Bernard Hepton quite well and from way back. Bernard’s wife, Nancie Jackson, was actually in Les Misérables, all those years ago. I also knew Terence Rigby and had worked with him before on an all-film Softly, Softly down in the freezing, wilds of Essex. 

Ian Bannen was very fragile. He was accompanied at all times by his girlfriend. Normally, we do not like this when filming, but she really acted as his chaperone. She brought him to the location to make sure he turned up on time. She'd always got a hot drink ready for him. He really needed someone to look after him. In so many ways, he was perfect for Prideaux. He gives a wonderful performance, but the fragility was genuine. I remember his girlfriend had an unusual job - she was a chicken sexer. God knows how they met! 

JM: There is a story there I’m certain! Just to complete our discussion about Tinker Tailor, I have a couple of technical questions you might be able to answer.  Firstly, we were wondering if you knew who shot the location footage of Prideaux’s car at the Mikulov Austrian border? 

MW: I think this was shot on a recce prior to the main technical recce. Probably only John Irvin and Austen Spriggs would have been there. The person most likely to have filmed this would have been a local cameraman (a Stringer) arranged via the Film Operations Manager at Ealing. The BBC had Stringers everywhere (mostly used for news), and as this was to be used in the final programme, it needed to be of broadcast quality. The information about the exact make and colour of the car would have been needed in advance for the Prop Buyer to match it. 

JM: That explains why there is nothing on the filming schedule about these scenes - thank you. Finally, in your opinion, why are the episodes of such varying lengths? 

MW: Betty Willingale, where are you?! That is the main reason in my opinion. There was also a lot of script arguments, and Guinness could spot a dead line at 20 paces. Within the BBC, episodes being of varying lengths was not a huge deal. Until you shoot a film, it's a very skilled job trying to guess what length it's going to be, especially something with a lot of action in it. There were two editors working on the series, Chris Wimble and Clare Douglas, and, of course, we were still shooting bits right at the end for earlier episodes. The problem did not really come to light until the episodes were complete. I think it was only episode six that was really short. 

We could get away with that on BBC2, but that wasn’t going to work for America. It was therefore re-cut into six equal parts and it is actually very nicely edited. 

When the edit was complete, they decided to do a very private showing for Sir Alec Guinness and John le Carré. I don't know why Jonathan Powell didn't do it, but he had me go and look after them. They had a drink and sandwiches and sat and watched it. When the end credits came up, both le Carré and Guinness’s names were spelt wrong! Thankfully, they chose to be amused by this!

On a related point, the subtitling turned up so late, I thought I might have to sit in Presentation and do it live. That only arrived, I think, the day before transmission. 

JM: The subtitles actually caused quite a lot of problems for the UK Blu-ray release. They were left off episode one entirely, and a replacement disc was issued. My understanding is that there were no subtitles on the film print. Any thoughts why?

MW: The print would have been transferred to video for transmission. I wonder if they only put the subtitles on the video? It was all done absolutely at the last minute.

JM: Well, that would certainly explain their absence from the Blu-ray. I think you might have solved that mystery, Marcia, thank you.

In Part Three of our interview, to be published later in the year, we discuss Smiley’s People and The Long Chase.

Screen captures from The Mayor of Casterbridge (c) BBC 1978

Screen captures and images from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (c) BBC 1979

Other images courtesy of Marcia Wheeler