Look away if you’re not interested, but here’s something about which Reel News cares really, really deeply.

Production Weekly

has broken the news that Gary Oldman is to play George Smiley, ascetic spymaster, in Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John Le Carré’s imperishable T

inker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Well, Oldman will certainly deliver the lines convincingly, but he could not look less like the tubby, owl-eyed character described in the novel.

Le Carré originally felt Arthur Lowe would be good casting. When Alec Guinness popped up in the TV adaptation, the author was, however, immediately won over. Still, nobody wants to sound like one of those Batman nerds who had apoplexy when Tim Burton cast Michael Keaton. Alfredson, director of Let the Right One In, almost certainly knows what he's doing.