‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 Isn’t Worth the Decade-Long Wait: TV Review

To the extent that “The Night Manager” has survived in the cultural memory since the limited series — adapted from the John Le Carré novel on the same time — aired a full decade ago, it was as a showcase for pretty people in pretty places. (It made sense that director Susanne Bier would go on to helm “The Perfect Couple,” a murder mystery starring Nicole Kidman and set at a destination wedding in Nantucket.) For a while, the show seemed like it could kick off a Le Carré revival; Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook delivered an underrated take on “The Little Drummer Girl” with rising star Florence Pugh the following year. But the trend never took off, and “The Night Manager” lived on largely as images of Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Elizabeth Debicki swanning around Switzerland and Mallorca. Much like an actual vacation, its transportive power was directly linked to its finite end.

Ten years later, however, “The Night Manager” is back, as is Hiddleston’s soldier-turned-hospitality-professional-turned-spy Jonathan Pine. Screenwriter David Farr has extended Le Carré’s story past its original conclusion, resulting in an odd hybrid: characters like Pine and his handler Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) remain the same, while the director (Georgia Banks-Davies), the BBC’s American production partner (Amazon Prime Video, taking over from AMC) and the setting are all new. In shifting the action to Colombia, “The Night Manager” can at least continue to deliver on stunning vistas and escapist intrigue. But after watching all six episodes of Season 2, I still wasn’t convinced this property — no hotel pun intended — needed revisiting, let alone expansion. At least a very dark cliffhanger ending sets up an already announced Season 3, even if it somewhat contradicts the easy-viewing appeal. 

Set nine years after the events of Season 1, Jonathan no longer works in hotels — the profession that first brought him into contact with arms dealer Richard Roper (Laurie), whose body he and Angela identify in an opening flashback, and served as a compelling, specific hook. (Thanks to Jonathan, Roper owed hundreds of millions of dollars to some powerful creditors, who kept him captive for years before dumping his corpse in Syria.) Instead, Jonathan helps run a remote surveillance squad within the Foreign Office known as the Night Owls, spying on targets (often in hotel rooms!) remotely and at all hours of the day. But despite the new job and a new, assumed name, Jonathan is still haunted by his experience with Roper, an amoral hedonist whose luxurious lifestyle was bankrolled by bloodshed. When an old associate of Roper’s resurfaces, Jonathan throws himself back into the fray in pursuit of a man billing himself as Roper’s spiritual successor: Colombian arms magnate Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva). 

Colombia is a country beautiful enough to deliver the stunning scenery one expects of “The Night Manager,” from lush jungles to historic cities, and stable enough to host a major TV production. But the memory of decades-long civil unrest, largely ended by a peace agreement signed in 2016, is still fresh enough to provide a real-life context for Teddy’s machinations. Calva is a captivating screen presence whose raffish charisma is a solid substitute for Laurie’s plummy, posh playboy — though the one-time “Narcos: Mexico” star deserves more roles beyond the Central American underworld, like his naive dreamer in Damien Chazelle’s 2022 film “Babylon.” “The Night Manager” is nonetheless Jonathan’s show, and while Season 2 has its moments, it’s ultimately unable to cultivate him into a George Smiley-like figure. Smiley, a more famous Le Carré creation, could tie together multiple otherwise unrelated stories over multiple books (and subsequent adaptations). Jonathan doesn’t hold up to the same sustained scrutiny. The same chameleonic blandness that makes him so suited to espionage makes for an inherently unmemorable hero.

The shamelessly Bond-inspired opening credits to “The Night Manager” — soaring strings over graphics of guns firing and rosaries shattering — no longer align with Jonathan’s tortured, traumatized mental state. An entanglement with Miami-based shipping broker Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone) recalls that iconic character’s revolving door of paramours, and Jonathan’s new boss Mayra (Indira Varma) could give Judi Dench’s M a run for her money in hard-nosed severity. But Hiddleston’s aged-up, haunted Jonathan is more dour than debonair, even if he retains the actor’s easy elegance. I can’t say I spent much time in the intervening years since Season 1 wondering what became of the reluctant spook, nor did I find him an especially enjoyable hang after our reunion. New colleagues Waleed (Anil Desai), Basil (Paul Chahidi) and Sally (Hayley Squires) never rise above the level of accessories to Jonathan’s obsessive pursuit of closure, let alone to that of a potential co-protagonist.

“The Night Manager” eventually establishes a more direct link between the two seasons, a blatant bit of revisionism that still facilitates a more dynamic back half of this new chapter. By then, however, it’s a little late. The viewer has long since started to wonder why Farr didn’t set his sights on another Le Carré yarn, or simply started fresh in Colombia without the need for British interlopers. Season 1 of “The Night Manager” was a success, but not such a world-conquering hit that a follow-up is almost economically mandatory, as with “Big Little Lies.” Season 2 is not without enjoyable intrigue, yet never proves worth the risk of opening a closed (literal) book.

The first three episodes of “The Night Manager” Season 2 will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video on Jan. 11, with remaining episodes streaming weekly on Sundays.