Time flies. It’s 10 years since the first iteration of The Night Manager landed on BBC One (shortly before its star Tom Hiddleston had a fling with Taylor Swift, trivia fans). John le Carré, author of the Night Manager novel, died in 2020. He was apparently pleased with the first series, as was his son – and custodian of his father’s estate – Simon, which helped to inspire screenwriter David Farr to create this follow-up.
By his own account, the germ of series two came to Farr in a dream. “I had a very clear image one night of a black car driving over the hills in Colombia, towards a boy,” he revealed, at a launch event for the new series, whereupon the outline of Night Manager 2 unravelled itself to him with mysterious ease (pictured below, Hiddleston with Olivia Colman as Angela Burr).
Judging by the first couple of its six episodes, Farr has done a pretty good job of concocting a tense and twisty thriller. After his apocalyptic dealings with ruthless billionaire arms dealer Richard Roper, the so-called “worst man in the world”, in the first series, we now find Hiddleston’s character Jonathan Pine living under the alias of Alex Goodwin, and working in a comparatively lowly MI6 surveillance unit called the Night Owls. As his boss Mayra (a frosty Indira Varmer) stresses, his job is to watch and listen, not go gallivanting around on field operations.
Yet needless to say, it isn’t long before Alex finds himself propelled into action, prompted by some news about senior MI6 officer Rex Mayhew (Douglas Hodge). Alex’s discovery of an enigmatic clue, plus a chance spotting of an old familiar face, puts him on a trail that points towards Colombia and an enigmatic local businessman, Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva). He is assisted in his endeavours by the alluring Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone, pictured below), who runs an import-export company in Miami which has been shipping goods from Britain to Colombia. It seems these goods aren’t quite what it says on the tin.
In any event, it’s not long before the slightly nerdy and bespectacled Goodwin is living much closer to the edge. For instance, a trip to Spain proves shockingly traumatic, and wreaks havoc with a desirable luxury hotel. There’s nothing for it but for Alex to fling off his disguise of mundane normality and assume the more extrovert persona of Matthew Ellis, supposedly a wealthy entrepreneur who has run companies in Europe and the Gulf. He has also pocketed a substantial fortune from a Hong Kong-based Swiss bank, and is looking for investment opportunities. Ellis hops a plane to Colombia and sets about making sure that Teddy can’t help taking notice of him.
The full extent of Teddy’s activities is so far shrouded in mystery, but the stakes are high and Ellis is walking a slippery tightrope. He is by no means immune to Roxana’s charms, but the nature of her relationship to Teddy seems dangerously ambiguous. Meanwhile, the more Ellis probes, the more he finds that the trail leads back to Roper, whose baleful influence is threatening to loom over this series almost as much as it did first time around (Hugh Laurie doesn’t reappear as Roper, but he’s billed as an executive producer of the new series). With opulent production values, thanks to input from Spanish and Colombian broadcasters as well as Amazon, Night Manager 2 is determined to make itself your first binge-watch of 2026.
The Night Manager is on BBC One on 1 January, then continues on Sundays. Also available on BBC iPlayer
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