It’s not very easy to sniff at The Night Manager, the Beeb’s new six-part spy thriller. Co-created with Mad Men-makers AMC, it’s partly set in the Middle East and features a cast of Proper Thesps, some of whom have been in Actual Films.
Tom “The Toff With the Teeth” Hiddleston plays Jonathan Pine, the night manager of a swanky hotel in Cairo who gets pulled into the world of Rotring pens-as-guns, DUH DUH DUH music and quizzically raised eyebrows. Don’t be fooled by the period setting though, 1993 might have been a halcyon age of rave, grunge, R&B and Britpop, but The Night Manager is no sartorial pool party. Instead Hiddleston’s clothes choices are suburban high street to the core.
His OTG (on the ground) outfit is a soft baby-blue cotton shirt and chinos (very Autograph by Marks and Spencer), while his workwear is a blue suit with a yellow tie: a jar of Hellmann’s meets the blonde one from Eurovision-losers Scooch. And when he turns, in episode two, it’s sartorially played out using All Saints leathers and a cheap-looking hoodie.
The Jekyll and Hyde outfitting might be obvious, but his outfits play their own part in the mise en scene. Their functional utility doesn’t give anything away from the slow, building, sylphlike plot. In that sense, it’s more in keeping with The Honourable Woman than the complex costuming of London Spy.
