To the extent that “The Night Manager” has survived within the cultural memory for the reason that limited series — adapted from the John Le Carré novel on the identical time — aired a full decade ago, it was as a showcase for pretty people in pretty places. (It made sense that director Susanne Bier would go on to helm “The Perfect Couple,” a murder mystery starring Nicole Kidman and set at a destination wedding in Nantucket.) For some time, the show appeared like it could kick off a Le Carré revival; Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook delivered an underrated tackle “The Little Drummer Girl” with rising star Florence Pugh the next 12 months. However the trend never took off, and “The Night Manager” lived on largely as images of Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Elizabeth Debicki swanning around Switzerland and Mallorca. Very similar to an actual vacation, its transportive power was directly linked to its finite end.
Ten years later, nevertheless, “The Night Manager” is back, as is Hiddleston’s soldier-turned-hospitality-professional-turned-spy Jonathan Pine. Screenwriter David Farr has prolonged Le Carré’s story past its original conclusion, leading to an odd hybrid: characters like Pine and his handler Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) remain the identical, while the director (Georgia Banks-Davies), the BBC’s American production partner (Amazon Prime Video, taking on from AMC) and the setting are all latest. In shifting the motion to Colombia, “The Night Manager” can at the very least proceed to deliver on stunning vistas and escapist intrigue. But after watching all six episodes of Season 2, I still wasn’t convinced this property — no hotel pun intended — needed revisiting, let alone expansion. At the least a very dark cliffhanger ending sets up an already announced Season 3, even when it somewhat contradicts the easy-viewing appeal.
Set nine years after the events of Season 1, Jonathan not works in hotels — the occupation that first brought him into contact with arms dealer Richard Roper (Laurie), whose body he and Angela discover in a gap flashback, and served as a compelling, specific hook. (Because of Jonathan, Roper owed a whole bunch of tens of millions of dollars to some powerful creditors, who kept him captive for years before dumping his corpse in Syria.) As a substitute, Jonathan helps run a distant surveillance squad inside the Foreign Office referred to as the Night Owls, spying on targets (often in hotel rooms!) remotely and in any respect hours of the day. But despite the brand new job and a brand new, assumed name, Jonathan remains to be haunted by his experience with Roper, an amoral hedonist whose luxurious lifestyle was bankrolled by bloodshed. When an old associate of Roper’s resurfaces, Jonathan throws himself back into the fray in pursuit of a person billing himself as Roper’s spiritual successor: Colombian arms magnate Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva).
Colombia is a rustic beautiful enough to deliver the stunning scenery one expects of “The Night Manager,” from lush jungles to historic cities, and stable enough to host a significant TV production. However the memory of decades-long civil unrest, largely ended by a peace agreement signed in 2016, remains to be fresh enough to supply a real-life context for Teddy’s machinations. Calva is a fascinating screen presence whose raffish charisma is a solid substitute for Laurie’s plummy, posh playboy — though the one-time “Narcos: Mexico” star deserves more roles beyond the Central American underworld, like his naive dreamer in Damien Chazelle’s 2022 film “Babylon.” “The Night Manager” is nonetheless Jonathan’s show, and while Season 2 has its moments, it’s ultimately unable to cultivate him right into a George Smiley-like figure. Smiley, a more famous Le Carré creation, could tie together multiple otherwise unrelated stories over multiple books (and subsequent adaptations). Jonathan doesn’t hold as much as the identical sustained scrutiny. The identical chameleonic blandness that makes him so suited to espionage makes for an inherently unmemorable hero.
The shamelessly Bond-inspired opening credits to “The Night Manager” — soaring strings over graphics of guns firing and rosaries shattering — not align with Jonathan’s tortured, traumatized mental state. An entanglement with Miami-based shipping broker Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone) recalls that iconic character’s revolving door of paramours, and Jonathan’s latest boss Mayra (Indira Varma) could give Judi Dench’s M a run for her money in hard-nosed severity. But Hiddleston’s aged-up, haunted Jonathan is more dour than debonair, even when he retains the actor’s easy elegance. I can’t say I spent much time within the intervening years since Season 1 wondering what became of the reluctant spook, nor did I find him an especially enjoyable hang after our reunion. Latest colleagues Waleed (Anil Desai), Basil (Paul Chahidi) and Sally (Hayley Squires) never rise above the extent of accessories to Jonathan’s obsessive pursuit of closure, let alone to that of a possible co-protagonist.
“The Night Manager” eventually establishes a more direct link between the 2 seasons, a blatant little bit of revisionism that also facilitates a more dynamic back half of this latest chapter. By then, nevertheless, it’s just a little late. The viewer has long since began to wonder why Farr didn’t set his sights on one other Le Carré yarn, or just began fresh in Colombia without the necessity for British interlopers. Season 1 of “The Night Manager” was a hit, but not such a world-conquering hit that a follow-up is sort of economically mandatory, as with “Big Little Lies.” Season 2 shouldn’t be without enjoyable intrigue, yet never proves well worth the risk of opening a closed (literal) book.
The primary three episodes of “The Night Manager” Season 2 can be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video on Jan. 11, with remaining episodes streaming weekly on Sundays.