First look: Matthew Macfadyen is George Smiley in "Legacy of Spies," le Carré's Cold War series headed to MGM+. Filming has wrapped.

George Smiley is back, and he has a new face. Variety has the first image of Matthew Macfadyen as John le Carré's Cold War spymaster in "Legacy of Spies," an eight-part series from the BBC and MGM+, which will carry it in the U.S. Filming has wrapped. Charlie Hunnam plays Alec Leamas, the embattled, world-weary agent-runner, and the cast includes Daniel Brühl, Agnes O'Casey, Felix Kammerer, Dan Stevens, Charlotte Ritchie, Joe Alwyn and Hugh Laurie. The series is adapted from le Carré's bestseller "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" and draws on material from his 2017 novel "A Legacy of Spies." Stephen Cornwell and Clarissa Ingram are the showrunners and writers, and Michael Lennox had lead directorial duties. In this telling, Leamas recruits a young East German woman to smuggle high-value Stasi documents into the West, two rival Stasi operatives give chase, and Smiley orchestrates from behind the scenes while the Soviet mastermind Karla looms in the shadows. The series was filmed principally in the Czech Republic. No premiere date has been announced. Smiley was last on screen in the film of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, played by Gary Oldman. Here is the lesson. The official description promises that "every emotion becomes a weapon," and that is exactly the danger. Le Carré's great subject was never gadgets or car chases. It was the moral cost of serving your country in a trade built on deception, and the decent people ground up by institutions that call themselves decent. "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" offers no clean victories. If the series keeps that bleak honesty, it will be worth your evenings. If it pads eight hours with romance, it won't. What I'd Assign: read the 1963 novel first. It is short, and it will teach you more about the Cold War than most textbooks.