The Little Drummer Girl: Stylish, Seductive – But Is TV Doing John le Carré Justice?

Like millions of others, I find myself glued to The Little Drummer Girl on Sunday nights. It’s smart, stylish, and achingly atmospheric – a spy drama that seems to have been painted as much as filmed. Every frame looks deliberate, drenched in a kind of retro beauty: dusty sunlight, muted colors, and interiors that could have leapt straight out of a David Hockney canvas or a 1980s bathroom catalogue. (Avocado tiles, anyone?)

And then there’s Florence Pugh, whose magnetic performance has turned the BBC adaptation into appointment viewing. As Charlie, the young actress seduced and recruited by Israeli intelligence to infiltrate a Palestinian terror network, Pugh gives the role layers that few others could. She is brittle, brave, and unpredictable – every flicker of emotion betraying the tension of a woman caught between belief and manipulation. Her Charlie is both pawn and player, a living embodiment of moral confusion.

Yet, as much as I enjoy this dazzling, slow-burn production, I can’t help wondering: is it really a fair reflection of John le Carré?

The Allure of the Surface

Director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) has given The Little Drummer Girl an almost hypnotic polish. Every scene gleams with style. The camera lingers on cigarette smoke, sunlight, and sand. The spies are beautiful, the danger sensual, the politics filtered through layers of cinematic gloss.

But while it’s visually arresting, it risks becoming all surface and little soul. The show feels like a meditation on aesthetics – a fashion spread disguised as espionage. The sense of moral rot and quiet heartbreak that defines le Carré’s novels often gets lost amid the artful lighting and meticulous set design.

This isn’t the first time le Carré has been made over for TV in this way. The Night Manager (2016), starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie, did something similar: it wrapped the author’s subtle psychological world in a sheen of designer espionage. Viewers got a glossy thriller; what they didn’t quite get was the bleak moral twilight that makes le Carré’s writing unforgettable.

The Real le Carré: Murky Morals, Not Glamour

When you read le Carré, you don’t just get spies and suspense; you get ethics, identity, and exhaustion. His worlds are full of weary men and women worn down by betrayal — not just of nations, but of principles and people.

In the novels, the real action happens in the mind. Characters constantly doubt not only each other but themselves. Truth and deception bleed together until they’re impossible to separate. That quiet, internal war – the loneliness of deceit – is what defines le Carré.

In contrast, the TV versions seem determined to make spying look like a lifestyle choice. The Little Drummer Girl’s wardrobe alone could fill a boutique in Notting Hill. Every shot of Florence Pugh in a flowy blouse and mirrored sunglasses whispers “espionage chic.”

To be fair, this might be inevitable. Television must entertain and seduce; literature can afford to haunt and unsettle. But the difference matters. On the page, le Carré writes about the banality of espionage, the grubby realities behind the myth of heroism. On screen, it often becomes performance – literal and figurative.

Women and the War of Shadows

One of the most intriguing things about The Little Drummer Girl – and perhaps the reason it feels more modern than many of le Carré’s stories – is that its protagonist is a woman. Charlie isn’t just an asset; she’s an actress forced to perform belief. Her manipulation and gradual radicalization expose the human cost of spycraft.

Florence Pugh brings that inner conflict to life beautifully. She doesn’t play Charlie as a victim but as someone fiercely intelligent, aware that she’s being used even as she submits to the role. Her emotional precision gives the series a beating heart.

And it’s refreshing, too, to see women front and center in a genre long dominated by trench-coated men exchanging coded messages in shadowy alleys. Le Carré’s male spies—those haunted, self-destructive creatures who drink whiskey in club chairs—represent an older age. Charlie belongs to a new one, where women uncover not only conspiracies but emotional truths.

Reading Between the Lines

I’ll admit it: for years, I avoided le Carré. The spy genre always felt like something “for the blokes” – all files, fieldcraft, and foreign embassies. But reading him as an adult has been a revelation. The so-called “boys’ fiction” is, in fact, an extraordinary dissection of human weakness, trust, and moral compromise.

His best novels—Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, A Perfect Spy, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold—are less about war and more about identity. They’re about how easily conviction curdles into cruelty, and how intelligence work corrodes the soul.

That’s why television adaptations, for all their craftsmanship, often feel like beautiful impersonations. They reproduce le Carré’s architecture but miss his interior weather.

Artifice vs. Authenticity

Still, to dismiss the series entirely would be unfair. Park Chan-wook’s direction isn’t shallow; it’s deliberate. The tension between truth and performance—the question of what’s real and what’s acted—is built into the show’s very fabric. Florence Pugh’s Charlie isn’t merely pretending to be someone else; she’s becoming someone else. That metamorphosis is pure le Carré, even if it’s wrapped in silk and shadow.

And maybe that’s the irony: the stylishness we see on screen mirrors the very deceptions at the heart of the story. The beauty of The Little Drummer Girl conceals something rotten, just as the characters’ polished façades hide moral decay.

A Modern Lens on a Classic Spy Story

So yes, I love The Little Drummer Girl — its elegance, its mood, its haunting performances. It’s art about artifice, and Florence Pugh is luminous at its center. But watching it also sends me back to the books, reminding me that the real John le Carré isn’t about glamour. He’s about guilt.

The TV series gives us a mirror-polished surface; the novels take us into the cracks. And perhaps that’s as it should be. Television seduces us with images; literature traps us with ideas.

In the end, The Little Drummer Girl is both tribute and temptation — a stylish gateway to a writer whose moral landscapes are far darker and far more human than any screen can truly capture.

The Little Drummer Girl airs Sundays on BBC One and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Florence Pugh stars as Charlie, alongside Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Shannon. Directed by Park Chan-wook and adapted from John le Carré’s 1983 novel.