Matthew MacFadyen & Dan Stevens Team Up for 'Legacy of Spies'
The BBC confirms MGM+ will be the streaming home of the new 'Legacy of Spies' TV series, based on the works of John Le Carré.
The John Le Carré revival that Tom Hiddleston accidentally kicked off with his return to The Night Manager has finally reached fruition. It first began surfacing in March 2025, with reports that Matthew MacFadyen (Succession) had signed on to star as George Smiley in a new adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the first ever to grace the small screen. News on the project then went dormant until December (when we were still on hiatus), confirming that the project was moving forward and that Amazon Studios would once again partner with the BBC, with the series going to MGM+.
As filming gets underway in the U.K., MGM+ and the BBC have announced the full cast and more details surrounding the series. Called Legacy of Spies, after the 2017 novel of the same name, it is less a direct adaptation of the novel (or the 1965 hit film based on it) than an amalgamation of the two, “drawing on material” from both novels. It’s still a historic first, as neither novel has been adapted for the small screen before, either directly or as inspiration.
The series also marks George Smiley’s return to the small screen for the first time since the early 1990s. Alec Guinness famously starred as Smiley in the 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and 1982 sequel, Smiley’s People. (The BBC skipped the middle novel, The Honorable Schoolboy, due to costs.) A much less successful adaptation of A Murder of Quality was attempted in 1991 with Denholm Elliott as Smiley, but it didn’t do nearly as well.
Here’s the synopsis for the new series:
When Alec Leamas, a highly experienced Circus field operative, recruits Doris Quinz, a young and dynamic East German woman, to smuggle high-value Stasi documents into the West, it sets in motion a series of events that threaten to explode in the crucible of Cold War Berlin. Pursuing Leamas and Doris are Josef Fiedler and Hans-Dieter Mundt, two Stasi operatives whose ferocious desire to shut down the intelligence leak is matched only by their internal rivalry and an iron will to outmatch each other.
Pulled into the action is Liz Gold, an idealistic young woman whose courage and conviction force Leamas to navigate a world where loyalties fracture, and betrayal is inevitable. Behind the scenes, the brilliant and taciturn spymaster George Smiley orchestrates operations while the elusive Soviet mastermind Karla looms in the shadows, setting the stage for a conflict that will define a generation. Personal lives become collateral in a ruthless intelligence war, and as the lines between duty and love begin to blur, every emotion becomes a weapon.
Macfadyen will be joined by an all-star cast, including Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) as Bill Haydon, Agnes O’Casey (Black Doves) as Liz Gold, Ariyon Bakare (Mr. Loverman) as Cy Aflon, and Charlie Hunnam (The Gentlemen) as Alec Leamas. Additional British cast includes Jake Dunn (Renegade Nell) as Peter Guillam and Safia Oakley-Green (Sherwood) as Molly Gibson.
The German contingent includes Daniel Brühl (All Quiet on the Western Front) as Josef Fiedler, Devrim Lingnau Islamoğlu (The Empress) as Doris Quinz, Volker Bruch (Babylon Berlin) as Emmanuel Rapp, Felix Kammerer (Frankenstein) as Hans-Dieter Mundt, Patrick Güldenberg (Murder in the Mountains) as Dr. Karl Riemeck, and Saskia Rosendahl (The Girl in the Spider’s Web) as Lotte Gamp.
Rory Doherty
The eight-episode series was written by Stephen Cornwell and Clarisa Ingram, adapting from (and inspired by) material from LeCarré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and A Legacy of Spies. Michael Lennox (Say Nothing) will serve as lead director with Cornwell as showrunner.
All three executive produce with Macfadyen and Hunnam, alongside Simon Cornwell, Graham Yost, Michele Wolkoff, Malte Grunert, Chris Rice, Joe Tsai, Susanne Bier & Mike Lesslie, plus Gaynor Holmes & Nick Lambon for the BBC, Nick Cornwell for the John le Carré estate, and Sam Costin & Nancy Bray for The Ink Factory.
Filming on Legacy of Spies is underway in the U.K. It is expected to arrive sometime during the 2026-2027 television season on the BBC and MGM+.
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