John le Carré’s most famous book has to be The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In this adaptation of The Night Manager, the Spy spends a bit of time where it’s nice and hot. The Middle East.
Our hero, played by Tom Hiddleston, is a lowly night manager at a hotel when he finds himself involved with a female guest and her crime boss boyfriend. She gives him a file filled with the details of an arms deal. He falls madly in love with her and they have a brief but life-altering relationship.
The next thing he knows, he’s working for some secret government agency and going deep undercover with a gun smuggler played to the hilt by Hugh Laurie. Hugh is suave and cool and also a cold-blooded bastard.
The good guys are bound by laws and conventions and treaties and all manner of government red tape and corruption that keeps the bad guys free to be bad. That’s a big part of what makes the story so good. If they could just walk up to the Super Villian and slap the cuffs on him, well, where’s the fun in that?
Our hero loves nothing better than a woman owned by a ruthless arms dealer. He finds two over the course of the six-part series, and even squeezes in one random woman just for the fun of it. We are told many times that everyone who meets him wants him, including the Boss’s right-hand man. I’m not sure Tom is that good looking, but he does clean up nice in several James Bond style scenes. He plays Baccarat in a casino, orders a vodka martini, and has a fondness for things that go BOOM.
The Night Manager was a great looking show. Brilliant effects, costumes, acting, and location work. The BBC spent £18 million on The Night Manager and it shows. It’s top notch on all fronts. It stars Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, and Olivia Colman. There was a bit of nudity here and there. A bit of gore and blood. A little talk of torture and a bit of actual torture. Hey, these are bad people and they do bad things. A lot of bad things.
The Night Manager got 12 Emmy nominations and it deserved every one. This show is well worth watching for six hours.
