The smash hit espionage drama The Night Manager is back for a second season after a decade away. The first episode premiered on BBC One in the UK on New Year’s Day, with new episodes weekly and the show is also available to stream on the BBC iPlayer. For viewers outside the UK it will be available on Amazon Prime Video from 11 January.
This long-awaited new season continues the adventures of Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), ten years after his infiltration of Richard Roper’s arms-dealing organisation. Unlike the first season, however, this is an original story that isn’t pulling from the 1993 John le Carré novel of the same title. However, the new series expands beyond the world of the original book, taking us to new corners of the globe, namely Colombia, while also following MI6 operations in London. While Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman return, there is a string of new faces. Here’s the lowdown.
In the years after his undercover operation in the first season, Jonathan Pine has been put on ice, and he has assumed a new identity, Alex Goodwin, overseeing The Night Owls, a team of surveillance operatives who monitor London’s high-end hotels for any troublemakers. Of course, this new, relatively tranquil existence is quickly shattered when one of Roper’s old associates shows his face, bringing back ghosts long thought dead and putting Pine on a collision course with trafficker Teddy De Santos (Diego Calva).
Pine once again finds himself trying to infiltrate a shady network with plenty of links to Roper’s. Exactly who he can and can’t trust is unclear, so he has to keep his wits about him, allied by the mysterious and glamorous Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone), a Colombian businesswoman running an operation out of Miami with ties to De Santos.
This not a world apart from the previous season with showrunner David Carr saying that the premise came to him in a dream. The Colombian setting and new cast members, including Indira Varma, Hayley Squires and Paul Chahidi, help to differentiate it from its predecessor. While the team behind the show had previously said they would wait for a follow-up novel, le Carré’s death in 2020 forced their hand somewhat.
The events of a decade before loom large over proceedings, and the links, both minute and obvious, make this a welcome continuation rather than an original story. Pine is haunted by what happened back then as he sees current events mirroring his past. There is more action than audiences might expect – something to keep us hooked, but also shifting away from the style of le Carré’s quieter, more character-driven storytelling approach. Even though the tone may be slightly different, the panache and class of the first season remain and Hiddleston is as compelling as ever as Pine.
The Night Manager season two consists of six one-hour episodes. New episodes air at 9pm on Sundays on BBC One in the UK and are subsequently available on the BBC iPlayer. In the US and other territories, the show will be available here on Amazon Prime.
Also see our feature on the best spy shows to try, from last year.
