Television: A Potpourri of Special Fare

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Programs of intelligence: political and scientific

Snail tracks have been observed in Hollywood: the actors' strike is inching toward a settlement. But Happy Days are not here yet. It could take a month or more for the old shows to return with new episodes. In the interim, viewers can choose among "specials" and series from the commercial networks and PBS that will instruct, provoke and entertain in intelligent new ways. For the next few weeks, TV will mute its role as electronic babysitter and engage the viewer in adult conversation. En garde, sitcommers and real people! The spirit could be catching:

A Mole in a Maze of Mirrors Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, PBS (Mondays, beginning Sept. 29, 8 p.m. E.D.T.). Except for The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, John Le Carré's convoluted plots have resisted translation into two-dimensional film and television. Now, in what should be the TV event of the season, the BBC proves that Britannia still rules the air waves. PBS's six-part showing of the BBC-co-produced Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is probably the most intellectually demanding—and rewarding—TV series ever seen in the U.S.

Mole is a code word for the double agent who has burrowed his way into the heart of the British secret service. As Tinker, Tailor opens, the head of intelligence, known only as Control (Alexander Knox), determines that one of his subordinates has an open line to Moscow. But which one? Enter the redoubtable George Smiley, brought out of retirement. The counterspy is an unlikely hero. He is middle-aged and stout, and his adulterous wife has bedded down with just about every man he knows, including Bill Haydon (Ian Richardson), one of the four candidates for Mole. Yet as Alec Guinness plays him, Smiley seems wholly real, a man who has walked through a maze of distorting mirrors for so long that he sees life as a series of untrustworthy reflections.

At times the chase through this maze is needlessly confusing; it is often hard to tell past from present. A pity, because everything else in the program demonstrates lapidary craftsmanship. Producer Jonathan Powell, Adapter Arthur Hopcraft and Director John Irvin are like glypticians bent on chiseling one perfect series for TV. Hopcraft has retained Le Carré's spare style, which is as tightly drawn as a violin string. It can convey almost as many tones, and it is wonderful to hear what talented performers can do with those laconic, loaded sentences.