The Night Manager: Season 2 - Review 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

IT’S been almost 10 years since The Night Manager dazzled us with its stylish and cleverly written update on the classic John le Carré novel from 1993.

Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie shone as adversaries, one an MI5 operative named Jonathan Pine, out for revenge for a crime he was unable to prevent while working as a night manager in Cairo; the other a wily arms dealer named Richard Roper, whose business frequently came at the cost of innocent lives.

The original BBC series was a deserved classic; densely plotted, brilliantly performed (by a cast that extended to Olivia Colman, Elizabeth Debicki and Tom Holland), extravagantly staged across lush global locations, sexy and smart. It was like capturing lightning in a bottle.

Could the second season match it given the length of time between seasons? The answer, thankfully, was an emphatic yes.

While some have criticised the sophomore run for not breaking out into a different story and putting Roper to bed (or rather keeping him in his grave), the decision to bring him back - a secret well hidden until midway through the season - enabled the rivalry to intensify.

And the writing team duly obliged by ensuring the stakes were sky high.

Hence, while Laurie was indeed back and on hissable form - “When you’ve slain the dragon, always check its breath” among his many deliciously delivered lines - along with the likes of Colman, Alistair Petrie and Douglas Hodge, there were also new arrivals who added to the intrigue and took the story in new directions.

The series picked up in the wake of Roper’s apparent death - signed off by Colman’s Angela Burr - as Pine continued to work for the British government in a more background spying role, heading a new team of surveillance experts.

But when he gets wind of a new arms deal with links to Roper, he quickly picks up the trail of Colombian arms dealer Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), who seems to be importing British arms into the country and building a guerrilla army. His way in is via Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone), a beautiful but steely informant.

At first Teddy seems to be a younger, more impetuous version of Roper, a disciple, who has taken up the mantle. Along with Roxana, he’s also susceptible to Pine’s charms.

But as Pine gets closer, using another new identity, it becomes clear someone else is pulling the strings. And when it also emerges that Teddy has an English father, the stage is quicky set for Roper’s return.

Yet while this may seem like lazy plotting at first, the new dynamic offers plenty of sly twists and conflicted loyalties, as Pine once more proves an efficient manipulator of people’s emotions… until the point that Roper realises he is alive and bids once more to outwit and ultimately slay his nemesis.

At times, particularly heading into the final straight, it was difficult to know where season two of The Night Manager was heading, particularly once Pine was forced to reveal his true identity to Teddy and blow his cover.

But as the stakes became increasingly desperate for Pine, so too did they for everyone surrounding him. Teddy eventually faced conflicting loyalties, Burr became exposed, Roxanna became a sacrificial pawn desperately scampering to survive and several of Pine’s new team (most notably Paul Chahidi’s UK operative) also felt unlikely to survive.

The final three episodes hurtled along at a terrific pace, with the simmering resentment between Pine and Roper eventually reaching boiling point come the shocking finale.

And what a cliffhanger the show delivered: a last act sleight of hand (“you didn’t watch the cups”) orchestrated by Roper that completely turned the tables on Pine and left an unfathomably high body count.

As things played out, Teddy did not survive (shot in the head by his own father for his betrayal), Burr was murdered by an unknown assassin after revealing a wider conspiracy via a phone message, Chahidi’s Basil had also been killed off after his duplicity was revealed and Pine was fighting for his life in the Colombian jungle.

Roper, on the other hand, was back in the ascendancy and reunited with his English son back in the UK - while the coup he had been plotting in Colombia from the start was now in full flow.

It was a gutsy finish. But one that set up a tantalising third season (already, thankfully, in pre-production).

As with Season 1, The Night Manager became required Sunday night viewing. It was intelligent, daring and unpredictable, as well as stylish and sexy as hell.

Hiddleston continued to sizzle in the lead role, with his three-way dance with Teddy and Roxana a super-charged sexual tour-de-force. Yet unlike season one, in which he relied on his smile an awful lot, this was a battle hardened, perhaps even more ruthless character.

Hurt at being deceived by Burr over Roper’s death, which was then quickly followed by the death of his mentor, Hiddleston portrayed Pine as a laser focused master manipulator; a calculated and sometimes risk averse operator who did whatever he needed to in order to get the job done.

He still wore a suit with panache and was charming whenever he needed to be, but the closer he got to being reunited with and against Roper, the more murky his decision-making became.

Laurie, for his part, moved from the type of villain you begrudgingly admired to one that you downright hated. Any likeability the actor projected in season one was now replaced by a cold-hearted businessman who didn’t blink when it came to making the tough decisions - such was his disdain for Pine and anyone aligned with him, and the lessons learned from their first encounter.

The battle of wits between the two of them made for electrifying viewing at times, with shared scenes brimming with the intensity of Pacino vs De Niro in Heat.

The support cast were also excellent, with Calva’s Teddy perhaps the standout given his tragic arc, which was by turns violent, confident and menacing as well as vulnerable and torn apart.

Morrone’s Roxanna was also great at playing both seductive and deceptive, as a woman operating in a man’s world and desperate to survive, while Hayley Squires also stood out as another of Pine’s allies, displaying grit and a quick thinking attitude. Chahidi, meanwhile, ensured that his good guy Basil was sorely missed once he ran out of road. Likewise, Diego Santos as Detective Martin Alvarez, who ultimately sacrificed his own life in the season finale to help Pine escape.

Another of season two’s successes came in the timely nature of the storytelling, with real-world events mirrored in some of the political machinations (staged coups in South America, government complicit arms dealing and high level corruption), while the use of exotic locations added to the cinematic feel that had been established in the original (and which helped draw favourable comparisons to the likes of Bond).

Strong, too, was the emotional investment, with core characters always worth rooting for no matter how tough some of the decisions they made. The ending would not have felt so heart-breaking and shocking if the characters hadn’t been so nuanced and complex.

This was top tier TV of the highest calibre - exciting, intelligent and always one step ahead of its viewers. It left you breathless for more.