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ReviewWhat to stream this weekend: John le Carré’s final interview, with Errol Morris in Apple TV+ documentary The Pigeon Tunnel, is full of intrigue

Spy novelist John le Carré is mesmerising in Apple TV+ documentary The Pigeon Tunnel, which features an interview with Errol Morris – his last before he died

Meanwhile, K-drama meets spaghetti Western in Netflix show Song of the Bandits, which sees good and bad bandits duke it out in early 20th-century Korea

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John le Carré’s final interview, with filmmaker Errol Morris, unspools in Apple TV+ documentary “The Pigeon Tunnel”, and it’s riveting. Photo: Apple TV+

Published: 7:45am, 20 Oct 2023

One wonders if Apple TV+ documentary The Pigeon Tunnel, comprising John le Carré’s final interview, was intended (by him) to be a valediction forbidding – or even encouraging – mourning.

At once reclusive and familiar, recognisable but unknowable, novelist le Carré, who gave us The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963); Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) and A Perfect Spy (1986), among many other lauded works, died in 2020, almost three years before the release of this 94-minute … what?

While le Carré was a master of fictional (and real) spies, he was also a master, to coin a cliché, of controlling the narrative of his life. And he continues to be in control here while professing to be open to answering honestly the questions of decorated filmmaker Errol Morris.

Perhaps that is what le Carré genuinely does – while still giving away little personal information we have not heard before and combining it with unrelenting deflection.

Le Carré offers innumerable lurid insights into the life and disreputable times of his con man and convict father, suggesting that his influence greatly informed his son’s career.