Cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts on his BAFTA Award winning work for 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy won two BAFTA Television awards in 1980. It was widely predicted that Sir Alec Guinness would win Best Actor for his performance as George Smiley, and Tony Pierce-Roberts won 'Best Film Cameraman' for his outstanding work on the series. Tony went on to enjoy a distinguished career in cinematography, which included a long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, earning him Oscar nominations for his work on A Room with a View and Howard's End. 

Tony, or TPR as he is widely known in the industry, kindly agreed to FaceTime with me about his experiences of shooting Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He also shared a number of previously unseen behind-the-scenes photos from his personal collection - these images are featured throughout the interview with his permission. 

How did he achieve the iconic look of the series? How much freedom did he have as a BBC cameraman back then? Did Sir Alec Guinness really kiss the camera before filming? Was Tony ever approached to work on Smiley's People?

Read on for the answers to these questions and much more...

Tony Pierce-Roberts filming Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with his 16mm Eclair NPR camera

- Tony is wearing an Oxford college scarf given to him by Sir Alec Guinness

Jonathan Moran (JM): Hi Tony, thank you so much for agreeing to chat with me. I thought we would start with where your interest in film came from and how you ended up working at the BBC?

Tony Pierce-Roberts (TPR): I was born in Birkenhead but at the age of eleven I emigrated with my parents to Central Africa. On leaving school in 1961, I joined the Central African Film Unit, where I enjoyed making game films and documentaries and I also worked with visiting film crews, including units from the BBC. I came to London in 1967 and joined the BBC TV Film Unit at Ealing Studios. I began as an assistant working a lot with, and being influenced by, Brian Tufano BSC. I finally became a cameraman at Ealing Studios in 1972.

JM: How did you come to work on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?

TPR: It's not like you had a lot of choice about what you did back then. I only ever turned down two jobs at the BBC and one of them was Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way. They came up to me with a sort of innocent look on their faces saying, “Do you like dogs?” I sensed something was in the wind, so I said, “No, I can’t stand dogs”, and I managed to avoid spending months on that series. 

The only time I refused to go away at short notice, was when I was due to work with Lord Snowdon in Gabon in West Africa. I needed time to prepare and check all my gear before we flew out - you can't just arrive in the middle of the jungle and expect everything to be working correctly. So I went in on a Monday morning to start checking everything and I was told to grab my passport immediately. Apparently, we had to go to Gabon the next day because there was a problem with the visas. 

I pointed out that all that was going to happen if we went early was that we’d be sitting for a week waiting for the bureaucracy to take its time, which it did in those days. I also pointed out that there was no time to check my gear and if there was anything wrong with it, we wouldn’t know. They suspended me on the spot. I remember saying, “Fine, I’ll go home then”. So I went home and they were mortified!

Then the head of the film department, Jack Mewett, who you normally never saw, called me back in. What I hadn’t realised was that I had probably been positively vetted to work with Lord Snowdon, and they couldn’t just replace me with another cameraman. So he read me the riot act about how this would affect my career - I’d only been a cameraman for about a year at this time, and I reluctantly went. And it was exactly as I thought - we got there and we couldn't do anything, because it took a week to get the visas through. 

You couldn't ever ask to do anything. If you ever said, “I'd like to do, ‘Play for Today’”, you could guarantee you were never going to do it! If you were in an area that you liked working in, all you could really do was do that work very well and then hopefully a producer might ask for you, but you couldn't ask for them. 

So, John Irvin came up to me when I was at Ealing. I must have been on standby, because I didn’t normally hang around the studios if I didn't have to. He said to me, “How would you like to do the film inserts for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which are going to be six weeks in Malta?” I’d never been to Malta, so that sounded fine and I told him that would be great. I went away and never thought anymore about it.

What they planned to do was to shoot film inserts for Tinker Tailor and then record the rest in the studio, as they did with all classic serials at the time - the problem is the film and studio inserts never really match. I can understand why the BBC originally thought of doing it that way - there are an awful lot of people sitting in rooms, which you could have easily done in the studio. It was Sir Alec Guinness who said he had never worked in a multi-camera studio environment and he would only be comfortable doing the series if it was all on film. Because the production were afraid of losing him altogether, they agreed to his request to do it all on film. Whether he was put up to saying that or not, I don’t know, but this was exactly what John Irvin and Jonathan Powell wanted. I have a feeling it was the very first time the BBC had done a classic serial entirely on film.

I don’t think Tinker Tailor would be remembered anywhere near as well now if it had been shot in that film/studio way. It would have been very cheap to make, and they’d probably have shot the whole thing in about two weeks, but I doubt people would still be talking about it.

JM: Were you pleased when you heard it was all going to be on film?

TPR: Absolutely, because I was already committed to the six weeks in Malta, which eventually became Portugal. If the producer wanted you, you got it.

JM: Once it was agreed that it was all going to be on film, did you and the director, John Irvin, have some discussions about the look of it?

TPR: Not a lot - it’s not like now, where you would pontificate on a specific visual language. We just turned up on the day and we shot it! John would be standing next to me and he’d say, “I’d like a close-up of Alec Guinness” and I’d frame the shot. We might have a little discussion about something and that would be it. We didn’t have a video assist - if you wanted to see the shot, you had to look through the camera. The only person who had a stand-in was Alec. Often I was just lighting the room and occasionally I would get a member of the crew to sit in there, usually my assistant Barbara Franc. 

We seldom, if ever, saw rushes. We started in Portugal and we had to send the film back to Ealing. At Ealing, they had these people called FOMs (Film Operations Managers) who you’d be on the phone to the next day. They would say, “Every frame a Rembrandt TPR, don’t worry it’s great”. The look of it, I think, came as a complete surprise to almost everybody. I think I was really the only person who knew what it was going to look like, because I was looking through the camera.

JM: Where did the inspiration for the look of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy come from?

TPR: I was very influenced by the work of Gordon Willis on The Godfather. One reason for a lot of top lighting was that Alec was going to be wearing spectacles throughout. We had shot some tests with him in his glasses, and anti-reflection glasses in those days were not very good. Top lighting helped to minimise those problems, and, given the size of some of the rooms that we were all in, frankly, there wasn’t a lot else you could do. The room where John Standing is the Duty Officer was tiny, no bigger than a lavatory. I first started using top lighting in Control’s safe flat when he meets with Jim Prideaux. I thought it looked good, so I carried on with it. 

I always quite like things to be a bit darker anyway. We were shooting on 16mm, so definition is always a little iffy. If you've got an actor sitting there, and you put a big hard light on them, it's always going to look sharper than something that's lit from a window or with a softer light, which I think looks more atmospheric and more real. I was occasionally criticised by FOMs for not lighting it with more hard light, but I tended to go towards a more naturalistic look.

Fortunately, we had proper prep time - we’d done some tests with Alec and one or two other actors as well. Barbara Franc was a very good assistant. We got on very well and I was with her for about two years. I wanted them to promote her to become the first BBC camerawoman - they never would do it, a huge mistake in my view, because she was excellent. In the end she left and became a very successful artist.

Barbara Franc at the Arrabida Convent in Portugal

The locations are extremely important for the look of the film as well. Austen Spriggs was a very good set designer, and we got on well. A lot of the rooms look a bit like BBC offices, and indeed some of them were— Toby Esterhase’s office, for instance. I think the way they portrayed the Secret Service at that time as being a bit like the BBC management actually works. Someone asked John le Carré what it was like, and he said it was basically like the BBC.

JM: Did you shoot the entire series?

TPR: Yes, I think I had one day off, and there are a few shots where we needed a second camera to go off and film while I was lighting something else. Virtually every frame in it I shot. There is also a lot of stuff I shot that isn’t in it. Barbara and I started off in Czechoslovakia to shoot plates because the sequence where Jim Prideaux was going off to the woods to meet the General was going to be much longer. We shot a lot of plates to do driving shots, none of which were ever used. We probably spent three or four days shooting in the Czech Republic. Austen went there too with his still camera to take lots of photographs of signage, and he got arrested because they thought he was a spy. 

In those days, saying you worked for the BBC did carry a bit more weight than it does now. People would say, “Come in, welcome”, but not the Czechs! What was so funny was the border guards on the German side in Bavaria are selected to be very hearty, ruddy-faced, nice beer-drinking, jolly Germans. Then you’d go 100 yards, and the Czech border guards were callow youths with long black hair and shabby uniforms - you couldn’t wait to get back to Germany.

One of the reasons they weren’t too pleased with us was that when we left the German border, we shot ‘Prideaux’s car’ approaching the Czech border to match up with footage we would eventually film in Aberfoyle.

JM: Did you have any discussions with John le Carré at all about the look of Tinker Tailor?

TPR: I hardly spoke with John le Carré. He came so infrequently, and obviously, we were shooting. He spent more time talking to Jonathan, Alec, and John. To my regret, I’ve got a really nice edition of Tinker Tailor that I got Alec to sign, but I didn’t have the opportunity to ask John le Carré to sign it. I keep kicking myself for never having sent it off to him. 

JM: Was there ever an expectation that the series would be shot on 35mm?

TPR: We wanted to shoot on 35mm, but the BBC wouldn't countenance it. The point was raised, but they weren't going to do it. There were a few selected shots, a couple of effects shots, which you had to shoot on 35mm as they just don’t work otherwise. 

JM: The effects shots in question used matte paintings to enhance the Glasgow architecture and give it a more Eastern European feel. There is a behind-the-scenes photo of two cameras set up on Hope Street in Glasgow looking towards the Watt Brothers store.  I'm guessing one of the two cameras was a 35mm camera capturing the effects shot?

 Barbara Franc (left), in Hope Street, Glasgow with the 35mm Mitchell camera (right) and the 16mm Eclair NPR 

TPR: We had a Mitchell camera there for that, but we'd have been shooting Ian Bannen at the same time on a close-up on my camera. 

JM: The effects shots were done by Cliff Culley at Westbury Opticals - did you have any involvement in this at all?

TPR: No, everybody did their own thing.

JM: What was it like working with John Irvin?

Director, John Irvin eyes up the effects shot on the 35mm Mitchell camera in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow

TPR: John was great. John was standing next to me all the way through, so we would have a chat, we might have lunch together, and discuss the shot in the afternoon. John was absolutely delightful. He took me to lunch at The Garrick Club afterwards as a thank you, and we have had the occasional memorial lunch since. 

JM: Were there any locations that stand out as memorably difficult or pleasurable?

TPR: Scotland was very difficult. I mean, the streets of Glasgow were fine, the border post in Aberfoyle was fine. I never, for the life of me, understood why they chose Scotland to do the scene in the forest. It didn't make any sense at all. It was a nightmare because I needed three generators to light it. You wouldn't have thought so to look at it, but with all those lights powering up like that, you can't put them all on one generator because they would just blow it up. It was down a narrow, muddy track to get there. And the sparks, because they were considering how you get out, were reversing these three generators in. The first one goes in, no problem. The second one goes in, comes half off the road and blocks it completely. So the third one can't get there. We could have just about managed with two generators. We lost a whole day and a half while they brought in a gigantic crane to come and lift up the middle generator and put it back on the road. 

That's why we didn't finish the sequence there and why we ended up doing the rest of it in Black Park, which is where we should have done the whole thing, frankly. It was ridiculous - it cost a lot of money because it took a day for all the gear to come up. It took a day to rig it. We lost a day and a half, so it took about a week in terms of cost to do it. We would have done it in a couple of nights at Black Park, but there you go. I obviously had no say in any of that and we just had to get on with it.

When we were in the Loch Ard forest in Scotland, I used a big light called a Wendy light for the first time, and there's a very good picture of that with me and all the electricians in front of it (below). Terry Manning, our gaffer, so loved the photograph he showed it to the Lighting Office, and it is clearly raining in the photo. It turns out you are not supposed to use this light in the rain, so the first thing they did was ban it until it had gone through some approval process!

Tony Pierce-Roberts (centre, with no hat) - on Tony's right (with a bobble hat) is Terry Manning and on Tony's left is Des O'Brien

On the positive side, all the Portuguese scenes were great. We started off there; it was warm, it was late autumn. If you look at the credits on films now, the crews they have are unbelievable. To go to Portugal in 1978, it was me, Barbara Franc, and Jimmy Monks, the grip. We were also lucky enough to have a driver with a big container truck, which had not only our gear but all the props and everything. I can't remember the driver's real name, but we called him Badger. Badger really liked us, and he became Jimmy's assistant, in effect. 

'Badger' in Portugal

If we had to do a tracking shot in Portugal, me, Barbara and Jimmy had to carry the grip gear down and lay the track. I'd be organising the lighting and then have to operate the shot, and then we'd all have to pick it up again and take it back into the van. When we got back to the UK, we were allowed a trainee on occasion, but you couldn't take a trainee abroad. Luckily, I was young and so was Barbara - nobody ever said anything; you just did it and that was it. 

We had an electrician with us from Ealing, and he may have had an assistant or he might have had a couple of Portuguese guys with him. They certainly would have picked up some Portuguese labour and lighting because they wouldn't have taken all the lighting over there. 

John Irvin gave me a very good tip when we were in Lisbon. He told me to go to the Port and Douro Wines Institute, because they have all these lovely big leather armchairs and it’s a very nice, old fashioned club. You can order wine or port back to 100 years ago and just have a glass of it. So I went one night; I thought, gosh, this is good. 

JM: You filmed a little bit of fado music out there. What do you recall about that?

TPR: Oh, I loved that - it is one of my favourite scenes in the series. It’s a lovely moment and there's not a lot of cuts on that; we play the whole thing through. 

JM: There was a lot of industrial action going on in the middle of filming Tinker Tailor, and there seem to have been various points where filming stopped or paused. How did that affect you?

TPR: It was really only when we were back in London, filming in Cork Street. Basically the dispute was about overtime pay, so we actually worked to rule between 9.30-5.30.

We’d been filming in Cork Street when the work to rule took off and they decided to have a Christmas drinks party there. John Irvin was there, Alec was there, Jonathan Powell as well, and we didn’t turn up. The next day, John Irvin was very upset with me, and I said, “John, I was on a picket line. What could I do?” He was a bit cross with us about that.

Lighting rig outside 'The Circus' (Clarebell House in Cork Street) - note the tracing paper over the windows of the Conference Room

JM: Did BBC drama cameramen have much creative freedom back then?

TPR: The answer to that is yes and no. In many ways we had very limited freedom. I couldn't really choose my crew, although I would have some say over my assistant. If they had given me someone who was a chain smoker, I would have had something to say about it, as you spend a lot of time together. I couldn't choose my film stock, I couldn't choose the laboratory, I couldn't choose my electricians. By comparison, when I went freelance I had the same gaffer for 27 years. That could never have happened in the BBC because of the rota systems. I never got to grade the film. In that sense I had very little freedom.

At the same time, because you didn't have things like video assist, until someone saw the dailies later on, you were the only person that really knew what it would look like. I presume Jonathan Powell would have been in London reviewing the rushes at some point, but I didn't hear anything negative, so I just carried on. In the end, it is not so much a matter of creative freedom, it becomes a matter of trust. They had to trust that you were going to do more or less what they wanted, but if you thought you could improve it in some way, you could offer that up and do it. The pride was in most of the time getting the shot to the director’s satisfaction. 

By contrast, although I have all these choices as a freelancer, a lot depends on who the director is. You will get some old fashioned directors who will take a view finder, they will have a grip with a plumb-line right next to you. They will put a mark down where the plumb-line is, and that is where the camera goes. There is no freedom there whatsoever! So, yes, you can have your own gaffer, yes, you can choose your laboratory, yes, you can have whatever lights you want but photographing it really depends on the director.  Other directors, perhaps from a writing or journalistic background, don't always have a great visual sense, so they will give you a lot more leeway.

So, on the one hand I had more freedom as a BBC cameraman, on the other hand, less!

Today, there's always somebody looking over your shoulder, and you're stuck in a tent with a digital imaging technician adjusting the picture. I did one digital film, and I hated it because you're not there with the actors; you’re often in a different room. What was great was working with the actors, interrelating with them. 

All the early films I did with Merchant Ivory Productions, up until the end of Remains of the Day, we didn't have a video assist. Jim (James Ivory) was a very quiet sort of person, and he stood right next to me by the camera. I did exactly what I did with John Irvin, and I'd say, “Have a look at this. Is this all right?” He’d say, “That’s fine”, and that would be it - that might be the limit of our conversation. I think the actors like it when the director is right there on set; it’s part of the relationship with them. 

Both John and Jim weren’t always cutting everything up into little bits. They would play a scene. One of the scenes I'm most proud of in Tinker Tailor is where Alec and Terrence Rigby are walking down Primrose Hill. 

We didn’t have a steady cam in those days - they didn't exist. The BBC had something called an Austin Dolly, which was the chassis of an Austin motorcar, with huge, big, round wheels, from some old-fashioned motor car. Poor old Jimmy and Badger had to pull this thing backwards downhill on this slope, and we went all the way down. The shot lasts for about 2 or 3 minutes. It's great; it really works very well, and there are only a couple of close-ups at the end. Some directors would have been shooting close-ups all the way down the hill, and you don't need it. The actors love it like that because they get to give a performance. 

I was just amazed that Jimmy and Badger could manage it because the vehicle itself was huge, plus there was me and Barbara on it and the camera. There might have even been the pole operator as well; I can’t remember.

Jimmy Monks loading the BBC Grip Van

JM: Do you know if Primrose Hill was closed off for filming this scene?

TPR: They probably had Peter Grimwade on one road and Marcia Wheeler on another, but filming on the streets of Lisbon, we had no real control over it - you can see members of the public passing by. 

JM: You mentioned that you shot some plates in Czechoslovakia that were not ultimately used. Was there anything else that was intended to be filmed or was abandoned because of budget or schedule?

TPR: No, the problem was that we didn't shoot enough! They were obviously editing as we were going along and during the course of it, somebody said, “Oh, we haven't got enough material”. 

They were contracted to provide seven episodes of a certain length to Paramount for the US broadcast. I remember someone saying, “Those American chappies can just put some more commercials on”. They do have a lot of commercials in the US, but the amount they show is limited and strictly controlled, so that wouldn’t work. As Marcia will tell you, the secret was to have very slow credits. That gave Geoffrey Burgon the opportunity to write the music for that beautiful psalm at the end. 

If you look at the credits, it's a roller credit, as they always did, but because they are rolling so slowly, they are almost single-screen credits. That’s the reason, when I came to leave the BBC, that everybody knew exactly who I was. The running time obviously didn’t matter for the UK broadcast. 

JM: There were a few scenes that needed to be reshot for technical reasons. What do you remember about them?

TPR: Well, Michael Jayston tells the story that Guinness didn’t like the way the Smiley/Connie scenes were done, and he wanted to redo them. That was not the case at all. Barbara Franc, not unreasonably, had to go to a funeral one day, and it so happened it was the day we were filming with Beryl Reid. Instead of getting a senior assistant out, and perhaps sending them down the day before to figure everything out, the BBC sent someone down on the morning who had just returned to work following a traumatic accident. 

Alec wasn’t looking forward to these scenes - he was so relieved to get them over that he took us all out to a very expensive dinner in Oxford that evening. Then we got the rushes report saying we had focus problems that would necessitate a reshoot later in the schedule - Alec was not pleased. That day when we were filming, John Irvin asked Alec to close the door a bit more forcefully in a scene. It was a fairly quiet scene, and when he went out, he slammed the door. Then he stuck his head back in, and he said, “Is that forceful enough for you, John?”

I don't blame the poor assistant; I blame the allocations office for not really using their loaf. With the allocations office, it was always a power play, and they were one of the reasons I decided to leave the BBC. One of the clerks in the allocations office said to me one evening, “We're going to make sure you don’t get to do Smiley’s People”. And I thought, yeah, that’s about right. 

JM: It’s difficult to understand that sort of politics. What did you do?

TPR: I was starting to get offers, and quite a number of BBC producers had left and were doing films. I knew I wouldn’t get another job as good as Tinker Tailor for several years because the series caused a bit of a furore. I was interested to hear from John le Carré that, basically, it's about Kim Philby. I thought the way Ian Richardson played it was much more like Anthony Blunt.

Funnily enough, just after the series came out, somebody popped the question to Mrs. Thatcher about Anthony Blunt, and he was publicly exposed. So there were a lot of current events happening that sustained the series in the public's consciousness, all of which made me feel like it was a pretty good time to leave the BBC.

JM: Tell me about Guinness. You’ve mentioned him already; what was he like to work with? 

TPR: Alec was great - every day was a treat. He liked us very much. His life had changed dramatically because he had made a lot of money on Star Wars. He would talk to us, you know. I mean, some actors don’t, but you could have a conversation with Alec about all sorts of things. Some actors sit in their trailer, come out to do the scene, and go away again. You don’t have any interaction with them at all. Alec was fine - he was a star, but he was great, and it was a pleasure every day. 

When we were filming the Oxford scenes, we had some exteriors to do, and he thought we all looked a bit cold. He went out and bought us all Oxford College scarfs. Barbara's got one, I've got one, a different one, and Jimmy's got another one. 

At the end of the shooting, I was at home looking after the babies, and a little green van turned up from Berry Bros. and Rudd. A man got out and said, “There’s a parcel for you from Sir Alec Guinness.” It was a claret - a very good claret and a little note saying, "Well done and thank you". 

That generation of stars were wonderful. When I worked with Peggy Ashcroft the following year, she was the same. She was absolutely charming. Barbara arranged a leaving party for me on Caught on a Train, and Peggy Ashcroft came to it. 

JM: There are stories of Guinness kissing the camera before a shot - is there anything to that?

TPR: Only once, and not during the actual shooting, but during a makeup test. I checked that with Barbara. He used to do it on every film he was on, but just the once. A bit like Ismail Merchant - when we started any Merchant Ivory film, he always used to crack a coconut and pour the milk out, and that was his thing.

JM: What about other members of the cast, was there anyone else who stood out for you?

TPR: The cast was brilliant. I loved Bernard Hepton. First of all, the character was good. I loved his costumes, and he's got this wonderful bent nose. There's a lovely shot right towards the end when he goes to meet Michael Jayston, and he comes walking down the street and around and up and knocks on the door. He just turns his head as the door opens, and the light catches his nose in the moment - it’s a great profile. 

They were all so good. Anthony Bate was fabulous as the official man from the ministry. Ian Richardson was terrific and very friendly. He got to know my wife (costume designer, Elizabeth Waller) very well, and she worked with him a lot. The whole cast was very chatty and easygoing. 

Unfortunately, Michael Jayston was unable to drive, so we had to shoot all the driving scenes with back projection in the studio, and they look like they are shot in the studio, I’m afraid. Those are the scenes I’m least happy with. We got away with it back then because people were watching on a smaller screen, but now on a bigger screen, you really see it. That’s the reason we had to shoot those scenes that way. 

JM: I think you had a few days at the Ealing Television Film Studios to do those rear projections and you did the Karla jail cell scene then as well. What do you remember about that?

TPR: Yes, I like that scene, it worked very well. I think we used Jimmy Monks’ hand to pick up the lighter - we often used members of the crew in scenes. If you look at the footage of Ian Bannen on the tram, just about everyone on the tram is a member of the production team!

JM: Are there any individual shots or sequences that you are most proud of? 

TPR: I think the sequence that I like the best is the Portuguese one because there's a lot more going on. A lot of the other scenes are in small rooms and the challenge was always to try and make them look different. I'm very pleased with the Duty Officer sequence with John Standing. 

It's a nice little selection of scenes and John was great. You couldn't call him ‘Sir’ any more than you could call Alec, ’Sir Alec’. Guinness insisted on not being called ‘Sir Alec’ - he just said, “I’m Alec”, and that’s it. The only Knight of the Realm I called ‘Sir’ was Sir Laurence Olivier when I worked with him on A Voyage Round My Father.

JM: I’ve got vivid memories of watching Tinker Tailor for the first time in 1979 and, as you mentioned, we all saw it on quite small screens back then. I wondered, from your perspective, what might be visible today that perhaps we couldn’t appreciate back then?

TPR: The definition is much better for a start and the blacks are much blacker. The BBC seem to have two sources. When you see it on a live transmission, it doesn't look very good at all but if you go onto the iPlayer, that seems to have been done to a higher definition. I watched it all through again recently and I was quite surprised at how good it looked. 

When the film was originally shown it was a live transmission on a telecine machine - I went to the telecine rehearsal. You meet the person who is going to be your telecine operative, and you go through it with them. The first thing he said to me was, “I hear it’s all been a bit of a cock-up, but we’re not going to take the blame!” I thought that was a nice start. Then, having rehearsed it all through, he said, “I’m off now as my shift is over”. So he left, and the guy who actually supervised the transmission hadn’t even seen it. I remember thinking, what’s the point?! Jonathan Powell practically had to drag me off him!

JM: If money and time were no object, what should the BBC be doing for Tinker Tailor  Soldier Spy in terms of restoring/preserving it?

TPR: What should happen is that you go back to the original negative. You take a reel and you digitise it, check the quality and compare it with what the BBC are currently transmitting. If it is substantially better, you question whether you should do the whole series. It’s a question of longevity really. I used to nag Merchant Ivory for years because they would never do an inter-negative matrix for all their films. All the negatives were slowly rotting away, and some of their early ones were in a terrible state. Luckily, that’s all been done now and done to a really high standard. A company called Cohen Media did it really well.

JM: I've recently seen the 4K remaster of A Room with a View - were you involved with that?

TPR: Yes I was. When I saw A Room with a View on DVD, I thought it looked dreadful. I think they had used the old tape that was probably prepared for VHS! So I rang up Goldcrest and made a fuss, and to their credit, they said that when a rights issue was resolved, I could regrade it. I went to Technicolor and regraded it at that point. Later on, I did Howard’s End, Remains of the Day, and The Golden Bowl. 

JM: I have to say A Room with a View is one of my favourite films - the 4K remaster looks absolutely incredible. The 50th anniversary of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is coming up. How do you appraise it now? 

TPR: I think it works. The casting was brilliant, the costumes were great. All the characters are wonderful. Terrence Rigby looked awful and shabby, Bernard Hepton looked marvellous with his little red silk handkerchief in his pocket. They are all great. Every department did really, really well. Even Alec’s wig is faultless - I defy you to see it. Perhaps it is a bit slow for a modern audience - I don’t know.

When I left the BBC, I was trying to do commercials. Some kindly editor managed to get me a covert copy of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. People in advertising are not going to look at a long series so I recut the whole thing down to 8 minutes and, believe it or not, that’s how I got my first commercial! That's what they should show for the 50th anniversary, my eight-minute cut!

JM: I would pay to see that! Did you keep any mementoes, props or souvenirs? 

TPR: You couldn’t. Everything had to be handed back. The clapperboard was just my clapperboard. We tore the tape off and put another bit of tape on. I think Mr Spriggs might have kept some mementos! We used to laugh because he had a roof rack on his car. We’d say, “What's with the roof rack, Austen?”, and he used to smile enigmatically. I think he ended up with a few things. Whenever you start a film, you never know what it's going to end up like - it’s just another job. It’s only really when you finish that you look back and realise, wow, did we do this? 

Jim and I sometimes sit in the cinema and watch the old Merchant Ivory films. It’s like, “Blimey, Jim, we did some good work”. At the time, you just turned up and did your job.

JM: When you look back at Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, are there any feelings or emotions that come back to you? 

TPR: Oh, I love seeing it. Every now and again, you do a film that changes your life. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy changed my life because it opened a lot of doors for me. I’m very proud to have done it and I'm so grateful to the BBC for giving me the chance to do it. 

JM: More generally, when you reflect on your career, what gives you the most satisfaction?

TPR: One of the best things that happened to me was joining the BBC. One of the second best things was to leave the BBC when I did - I was young enough to build a client list, which eventually led to me doing A Room With A View and everything took off after that.

I'm so pleased to have realised my three ambitions; I wanted to join the BBC and I did, I wanted to become a BBC cameraman and I did and, finally, I wanted to become a Hollywood cameraman which I also achieved. 

JM: Tony, thank you so much for your time. 

Our interview with Tony Pierce-Roberts was conducted in July 2026, prior to the sad news of the passing of director, John Irvin.

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

All other photos courtesy of Tony Pierce-Roberts