TV viewers have become accustomed to increasingly lengthy waits between seasons of their favourite shows. Stranger Things took three years between its fourth and fifth seasons, while Euphoria will be back next year, more than four years after it was last on air. But BBC One’s The Night Manager – which returns this week after a 10-year hiatus – takes the biscuit. When last we followed the adventures of Tom Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine, David Cameron and Barack Obama were still in office, the Paris Climate Accords had just been adopted, and Covid-19 was just a glint in a pangolin’s eye. So, you’d be forgiven for not knowing quite what to expect from the return of John Le Carré’s taciturn hero.
Several years on from the events of the first season, Pine – now known as Alex Goodwin – is leading a subdivision of MI6 dedicated to nocturnal surveillance. “Nothing above the parapet,” Pine’s mentor Rex (Douglas Hodge) warns him. “That face is too pretty to lose.” But Pine is still transparently haunted by the mission that brought down villainous arms dealer Richard Roper, and when a chance encounter resurfaces memories from his time embedded in the Roper operation, Pine sets off on a quest for justice. Or is it vengeance? A man calling himself “the true disciple of Richard Roper” is running guns into Colombia, and nobody at MI6 seems half as concerned as Pine. Thus begins a cross-continental journey, back into the dark heart of the international weapons trade.
When the show first appeared, it was a huge global hit, combining the distinctively British suaveness of James Bond with the gritty geopolitical themes of shows like Homeland. Casting Hugh Laurie against type as the show’s antagonist, and Hiddleston in a star-makingly debonair turn, proved inspired. In this second chapter, the pieces have to be realigned: Olivia Colman is, to begin with, a peripheral figure, replaced in MI6 by Indira Varma’s suspicious chief and Paul Chahidi’s skittish handler. With Roper out of the picture, Diego Calva steps in as Pine’s foil, playing a dapper Colombian kingpin. Meanwhile the damsel in distress/femme fatale role (Le Carré tends to deal in feminine archetypes) is handed to Camila Morrone, perhaps best known as Leonardo di Caprio’s girlfriend until 2022, but now, aged 28, stepping convincingly into more dramatic territory.
Much still rests, though, on Hiddleston’s sculpted shoulders. “Tell me who you really are,” an occupational therapist grills him. “I am the man who will not explode.” Pine is a man who has been deeply wounded by both the distant and recent past, and who now exists as a ghost. He works by night and sleeps by day, lives under a fake name and associates only with colleagues who do not know who he really is, what he’s really done. Pine is a high-functioning somnambulist, and now resolutely dead behind the eyes – which all rather suits Hiddleston’s acting style. Having been consistently linked with the 007 vacancy, Hiddleston (at 44) is likely too old for the direction in which Amazon MGM wishes to take the franchise. But Pine could – if the BBC is sensible and doesn’t wait a decade for season three – be a more grown-up alternate. Certainly, the action sequences are far more effectively suspenseful than late-era Bond.
The BBC only made the first two episodes of the new series available to critics. Perhaps they know the show is already a surefire hit. That means that the full arc of the narrative is hard to appraise. But on the evidence of these first episodes, the show’s writer, David Farr, and new director, Georgi Banks-Davies, have managed to steer the show safely beyond the trusted source material. The pace, the intrigue, the sly sexiness; all are retained. Crucially, this drama is proper cross-generational Sunday night viewing, the sort of televisual real estate that has, too often, been conceded to the streamers. I wanted more than two episodes to form a proper judgement – but, having watched them and written this review, I still want more. That’s the sign of good TV.
While the 10-year interval may frustrate some viewers (the series is inextricably linked to the first outing, and the plotting quite knotty), there is much to be admired in the return of The Night Manager. Gripping without being excessively silly, compelling without being indulgently cerebral, The Night Manager pulls off the, increasingly rare, trick of knowing its audience, understanding its success, and replicating the formula. Jonathan Pine is on course to be a globetrotting icon on par with Mr Bond, and a demonstration of British soft power’s efficacy when the BBC has both confidence and resources – Trump be damned.
