The Night Manager, BBC1/iPlayer
How long it now seems since The Night Manager returned. Much anticipated, the early episodes were damp squibs, the New Year’s Day firework display that fizzled out when it should have lit up January.
But just look at how it has turned out. This second series of John le Carré’s adapted tale should stand as a warning not to write a show off too soon. It’s a lesson we’ll forget, but for now let’s savour how The Night Manager turned itself around. (Spoilers ahead.)
By episode three, it was Night Manager business as usual, with Jonathan Pine/Matthew Ellis (Tom Hiddleston) posing as an investor in Colombian bad boy Teddy Dos Santos’s arms-smuggling scheme.
Then it happened. In the final seconds of the hour, we heard “that” plummy English voice and Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) sailed into view. Last seen on a mortuary slab, Laurie didn’t just bring Roper back from the dead, he brought the entire series along with him.
It had been a classic case of misdirection. The word was that Hiddleston would return, ditto Olivia Colman as spy handler Angela Burr. But Laurie, save for the slab scene, was only supposed to be lending his name to the project as executive producer.
Aye right, said the sceptics. As if any director would pass up the chance to have Laurie grace a production. The Night Manager without him would be like Mission: Impossible sans Cruise or Slow Horses minus Gary Oldman.
In the event, Roper’s return was one of television’s worst-kept secrets, but it was still a great rug puller. Everything was enlivened by it. As soon as Hiddleston jumped on the back of a moving motorbike in episode four, you knew all would be well.
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The finale had a lot to live up to: ten million watched Roper being slung into the back of a police van at the end of series one. The last act here was not as smooth, but it was all the better for that. Twist followed turn, followed bluff and double bluff, until this viewer’s head was spinning with the thrill of it all.
The stars of the finale were Laurie and Diego Calva as Teddy, Roper’s never-good-enough, or rather never-English-enough, son. Calva has been the breakout star of the series, his fashion choices applauded, and even his hairstyle has become a “thing”. Just as well the kid can act as well as look good in a vest and leather bomber jacket.
His character’s closeness to Pine was one of the series’ best surprises, though it left the talented Camila Morrone (playing businesswoman Roxana Bolanos) without a lot to do.
While women were initially dominant - and credit to Hayley Squires as Hiddleston’s working class wingwoman - the boys (and their toys) took over again at the end. The closing stages were like Jonathan Pine’s machine gun impression: one bullseye after another until all was quiet, save for the welcome creak of a door being left open for another series.
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