One of the best spy thriller movies ever is getting a starry BBC remake

The series will adapt novels by John le Carré featuring legendary spy characters.

Titled Legacy of Spies, the show will adapt two novels by the author: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and its prequel/sequel book A Legacy of Spies.

Written by Stephen Cornwell (Message from the King, also a son of le Carré) with Clarissa Ingram, the series will star Matthew Macfadyen (Succession) as master-spy George Smiley, Charlie Hunnam (The Gentlemen) as the British intelligence officer Alec Leamas, Daniel Brühl (Rush) as East German spy Jens Fielder and Devrim Lingnau Islamoğlu (The Empress) as Doris Quinz aka Agent Tulip.

Also produced by Graham Yost (Justified, Silo, Slow Horses), Malte Grunert (All Quiet on the Western Front) and Suzanne Bier (The Night Manager), the thriller will chart George Smiley’s overarching quest for his nemesis, Russian master-spy Karla, through the Cold War.

Legacy of Spies will be set across the UK, and what was, in the time period of the story, East and West Germany and Czechoslovakia.

The plot synopsis states:

"The series begins in the shadow of the newly-erected Berlin Wall, as Alec Leamas watches his last agent shot dead by East German sentries.

"For Leamas, a senior British intelligence officer in Berlin, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse - a desk job - Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge.

"Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service, with himself as the bait.

"In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants."

Simon Cornwell and Stephen Cornwell, founders and co-CEOs at production company The Ink Factory, said in a statement: “This project is in many ways the most ambitious and all-encompassing adaptation of le Carré’s work to date, taking our father’s best-known and most-loved most character – the complex and brilliant spymaster George Smiley – and using this medium as a canvas to chart his story as he moves through a world which culturally and politically shapes the one we live in today.

"To have Matthew embody this operational mastermind, a man both vulnerable and dangerous, alongside the brilliant talent of Charlie and Devrim, is a great coup."

The character of George Smiley was also previously played on screen by Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman in separate adaptations of le Carré's novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Comprising eight episodes, Legacy of Spies will air on BBC One in the UK and Ireland and MGM+ in the US.