One Of The Best Spy Thrillers Of All Time Is Back — 10 Years Later

A ruthless arms dealer who kills with impunity and masks his global weapons deals behind a charitable facade. A former soldier caught up in a clandestine mission with life-or-death stakes. The beautiful woman who finds herself caught between two dangerous men; one her husband, the other hellbent on bringing him down.

That’s a very rough summary of the first season of The Night Manager – not to be confused with the Netflix spy thriller, The Night Agent – based on John le Carré’s novel of the same name. The series debuted on the BBC in the UK and AMC here in the United States nearly a decade ago, in February 2016.

The first season of The Night Manager starred Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, a hotelier who finds himself embroiled in a secret mission to take down Richard Roper, an arms dealer played by Hugh Laurie. Elizabeth Debicki played Jed Marshall, Roper’s partner who finds herself romantically, and dangerously, entangled with Pine as he infiltrates Roper’s organization.

Season 1 also starred Olivia Colman as Angela Burr, an intelligence officer and Pine’s handler, as well as Tom Hollander as Corkoran, Roper’s canny lieutenant.

Showrunner David Farr returns for Season 2, an entirely original story based on le Carré’s work, though it is not an adaptation of one of his novels. Hiddleston returns as Pine, though he goes by various aliases both in the British intelligence services, on the run and during his new operation to take down Colombian arms dealer, Teddy Dos Santos, played by Diego Calva. Get ready to keep track of names.

It’s a twisty-turny new season, filled with betrayal, high-stakes espionage and at least one surprising reveal in the third episode, the latest to drop on Prime Video. Episode 4 lands this Sunday, January 18. This time around, Pine has new entanglements, with a potential new complicated romance in the form of Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone), a Colombian-American businesswoman with ties to Dos Santos’s operation.

Other new cast members include Indira Varma as Mayra Cavendish, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, whose hands do not appear to be entirely clean; unassuming MI6 operative, Basil Karapetian (Paul Chahidi); and Hayley Squires as MI6 operative, Sally Price-Jones.

So far, the second season is receiving mixed feedback. While both Season 1 and Season 2 of The Night Manager hold a 91% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, Season 2’s audience score has dropped from 89% to 66%.

Jack Seale of The Guardian, wrote of the second season: “Although the drama still feels like cashmere and silk, the blade stashed in the folds isn’t so sharp […] There is something fundamentally gauche, too, about the way season two methodically tries to rebuild the dynamic of the first run. None of this is to say The Night Manager is suddenly average: it still floats far above most of the competition. But it no longer feels pristine.”

Much-deserved praise has been heaped on Hiddleston for his portrayal of Pine. Christopher Stevens of The UK Daily mail notes that the actor “has acquired new depths as an actor, an ability to convey pain and doubt in his eyes without any flicker of facial expression” but Variety’s Alison Herman is unimpressed by the character, noting that the “same chameleonic blandness that makes him so suited to espionage makes for an inherently unmemorable hero.”

I’ve watched the first three episodes and while many complaints leveraged at the season hold water, I’m still thoroughly enjoying the return of Jonathan Pine and the lush Colombian scenery. No, the writing is not as sharp as Season 1, and there are some outlandish elements designed to create tension that come off as a little too preposterous, but these are minor quibbles. The pacing can be a little slow at times, but much the same thing could be said for Season 1. Hiddleston is fantastic, as always, and Diego Calva’s Teddy is a crackling new villain. Fans of Apple TV’s Slow Horses should give The Night Manager a try, though this is a much more serious-minded show. Don’t expect much flatulence-based comic relief.

Reviews indicate that the second half of the six-episode season is stronger, and I’m inclined to believe this is a big part of the disparity between the critical and audience RT scores. Whether a second season was really necessary is perhaps a better question, but there are only so many great spy shows out there, and whatever its shortcomings, Season 2 still captures much of The Night Manager’s magic.