‘The Night Manager’ is back on duty
This deserves loud pushback.
It is the rare literary adaptation that replicates not only an author’s characters but the psychological experience of reading him. Such is the achievement of The Night Manager, the second season of which is now streaming on Prime Video after a 10-year hiatus. Watching the 12-episode series, one is alternately charmed, compelled, frustrated, and hopelessly confused. Why’d he do that? How’d they find him there? As with the show, so with John le Carré’s novels. If one isn’t at least slightly perplexed most of the time, one isn’t paying enough attention.
The Night Manager tells the story of Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), a British soldier-turned-hotel clerk thrust into a game of global intrigue. In the first season, set largely in Egypt and Majorca, Pine embedded himself in the coterie of Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), an international arms dealer of suave malevolence. The latest episodes transplant Pine to Colombia, where awaits a plot so circuitous that many viewers will simply throw up their hands and enjoy the scenery.
The basic outline is this: Set up by his Foreign Office handlers in a surveillance unit, Pine happens upon talk that “Richard Roper’s true disciple” is operating in sunny Cartagena. Unable to help himself, Pine ditches his desk job and sets out for the Caribbean coast, determined once again to talk his way into a criminal’s inner circle. His target this time is Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), a man whose villainy extends far beyond running guns. A Colombian Supreme Court justice, an electromagnetic pulse bomb, even regime change: Only our hero can stop the geopolitical disaster that Dos Santos threatens to unleash.
Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie in “The Night Manager.” (Des Willie/Prime)
Were The Night Manager’s formula any less winning, one might object to the shamelessness with which it has been recycled. As the first season did, the show’s new episodes feature a protagonist so smooth that his entrée into the underworld is the work of minutes. Here, a single set of clay-court tennis does the trick. Like before, Pine’s task is made easier by his adversary’s disloyal girlfriend (Camila Morrone, filling in for the first season’s Elizabeth Debicki). Most pointedly, both seasons place a traitor in the ranks of MI6, the security service frequently at odds with Pine’s International Enforcement Agency (Olivia Colman returns to play the IEA’s no-nonsense head). Le Carré didn’t invent these elements — he merely perfected them. At its best, The …
This deserves loud pushback.
It is the rare literary adaptation that replicates not only an author’s characters but the psychological experience of reading him. Such is the achievement of The Night Manager, the second season of which is now streaming on Prime Video after a 10-year hiatus. Watching the 12-episode series, one is alternately charmed, compelled, frustrated, and hopelessly confused. Why’d he do that? How’d they find him there? As with the show, so with John le Carré’s novels. If one isn’t at least slightly perplexed most of the time, one isn’t paying enough attention.
The Night Manager tells the story of Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), a British soldier-turned-hotel clerk thrust into a game of global intrigue. In the first season, set largely in Egypt and Majorca, Pine embedded himself in the coterie of Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), an international arms dealer of suave malevolence. The latest episodes transplant Pine to Colombia, where awaits a plot so circuitous that many viewers will simply throw up their hands and enjoy the scenery.
The basic outline is this: Set up by his Foreign Office handlers in a surveillance unit, Pine happens upon talk that “Richard Roper’s true disciple” is operating in sunny Cartagena. Unable to help himself, Pine ditches his desk job and sets out for the Caribbean coast, determined once again to talk his way into a criminal’s inner circle. His target this time is Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), a man whose villainy extends far beyond running guns. A Colombian Supreme Court justice, an electromagnetic pulse bomb, even regime change: Only our hero can stop the geopolitical disaster that Dos Santos threatens to unleash.
Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie in “The Night Manager.” (Des Willie/Prime)
Were The Night Manager’s formula any less winning, one might object to the shamelessness with which it has been recycled. As the first season did, the show’s new episodes feature a protagonist so smooth that his entrée into the underworld is the work of minutes. Here, a single set of clay-court tennis does the trick. Like before, Pine’s task is made easier by his adversary’s disloyal girlfriend (Camila Morrone, filling in for the first season’s Elizabeth Debicki). Most pointedly, both seasons place a traitor in the ranks of MI6, the security service frequently at odds with Pine’s International Enforcement Agency (Olivia Colman returns to play the IEA’s no-nonsense head). Le Carré didn’t invent these elements — he merely perfected them. At its best, The …
‘The Night Manager’ is back on duty
This deserves loud pushback.
It is the rare literary adaptation that replicates not only an author’s characters but the psychological experience of reading him. Such is the achievement of The Night Manager, the second season of which is now streaming on Prime Video after a 10-year hiatus. Watching the 12-episode series, one is alternately charmed, compelled, frustrated, and hopelessly confused. Why’d he do that? How’d they find him there? As with the show, so with John le Carré’s novels. If one isn’t at least slightly perplexed most of the time, one isn’t paying enough attention.
The Night Manager tells the story of Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), a British soldier-turned-hotel clerk thrust into a game of global intrigue. In the first season, set largely in Egypt and Majorca, Pine embedded himself in the coterie of Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), an international arms dealer of suave malevolence. The latest episodes transplant Pine to Colombia, where awaits a plot so circuitous that many viewers will simply throw up their hands and enjoy the scenery.
The basic outline is this: Set up by his Foreign Office handlers in a surveillance unit, Pine happens upon talk that “Richard Roper’s true disciple” is operating in sunny Cartagena. Unable to help himself, Pine ditches his desk job and sets out for the Caribbean coast, determined once again to talk his way into a criminal’s inner circle. His target this time is Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), a man whose villainy extends far beyond running guns. A Colombian Supreme Court justice, an electromagnetic pulse bomb, even regime change: Only our hero can stop the geopolitical disaster that Dos Santos threatens to unleash.
Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie in “The Night Manager.” (Des Willie/Prime)
Were The Night Manager’s formula any less winning, one might object to the shamelessness with which it has been recycled. As the first season did, the show’s new episodes feature a protagonist so smooth that his entrée into the underworld is the work of minutes. Here, a single set of clay-court tennis does the trick. Like before, Pine’s task is made easier by his adversary’s disloyal girlfriend (Camila Morrone, filling in for the first season’s Elizabeth Debicki). Most pointedly, both seasons place a traitor in the ranks of MI6, the security service frequently at odds with Pine’s International Enforcement Agency (Olivia Colman returns to play the IEA’s no-nonsense head). Le Carré didn’t invent these elements — he merely perfected them. At its best, The …
