Thirty-four years ago, New York Times film critic Vincent Canby accurately referred to a film adaptation of John le Carre's spy novel The Little Drummer Girl as "overstuffed" with characters, plot, and action and wondered idly if it "could have been done successfully as a television mini-series."

Canby, alas, is gone, but we do finally have an answer for him: a qualified yes. AMC's new six-hour version of The Little Drummer Girl is superior to the film in every way, even if it still has a few shortcomings.

From the same producers who in 2016 adapted The Night Manager, le Carre's edgy tale of international arms trafficking, The Little Drummer Girl captures the mutual remorselessness of terrorists and the forces that oppose them; the through-the-looking-glass logic with which they hunt one another; and their disregard for what they regard as collateral damage, the civilians caught in the middle. Television critic Glenn Garvin has more.

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