The Venetian Vase

I have always loved the story of The Night Manager. Even before the TV show, I was gripped by John le Carré’s novel. It’s hard not to be enamoured with the perfect blend of intrigue, romance and adventure as the reader follows Jonathan Pine. Plucked from his job as a hotel night manager by British Intelligence to infiltrate the arms dealing operation of arch-villain Richard Roper, Pine is at once charming and deceptive, out of his depth and uniquely qualified. I was hooked by the 2016 television adaptation of the novel, and impressed by how it broadly stayed faithful to the book while cleverly updating the geopolitical setting to the events of the Arab Spring. While I was initially sceptical of the final episode, which veered from the novel and delivered a completely different ending for the characters of Pine and Roper, I eventually grew to appreciate how this version of the story was aiming for a more emotional response from the viewer than the novel delivered.

So, after ten years The Night Manager has finally returned, and I’m happy to say that I enjoyed the story all over again, although I did experience, no hotel metaphor intended, some reservations about the whole exercise. Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) is still working for British Intelligence, heading up a unit known as the Night Owls, whose job it is to monitor the suspicious nocturnal habits of foreign guests at London hotels. There are shades here of le Carré’s world of scalphunters and lamplighters, and also a nod to more recent spy fiction by Mick Herron (Slow Horses). When Pine spots a former mercenary of Richard Roper’s at an exclusive hotel it sets off a chain reaction of violent events. Pine’s senior colleague Rex Mayhew (Douglas Hodge) is found dead in an apparent suicide, and Mottram has left behind a series of messages for Pine which links MI6 Chief Mayra Cavendish (Indira Varma) to Colombian arms dealer and self-styled philanthropist Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva). Pine follows the trail to Madrid, where half of his Night Owl unit are killed. Operating outside the Service with two loyal agents, Pine’s death is faked and he travels to Colombia to infiltrate Dos Santos’s operation in Cartagena. It’s not long before Pine finds himself chasing some very old ghosts. Dos Santos models himself as the heir to Richard Roper, and this is true in more ways than one.

To be clear, there are plenty of flaws in The Night Manager’s return to television. There are scenes where Pine conveniently overhears crucial conversations, and it beggars belief that no one spots him eavesdropping. There are false notes when Pine’s attractive neighbour asks him out to dinner after returning his stray cat (did she think asking for a cup of sugar was too obvious?) and a puzzling scene where Mayra Cavendish intimidates an underling to handover some files – she’s the Chief, why doesn’t she just order him to handover the files? Oh, and don’t get me started on the $300 million Pine stole from Roper at the end of series one and which he has kept stashed in a Luxembourg bank account for ten years. Are we seriously meant to believe that this money hasn’t accrued any interest over the past decade, and that Pine is happy to live off a civil servant’s salary when he has enough money to buy a Premier League football club?

And yet there is much to admire in The Night Manager. The story is as compelling and pacy as ever. The acting, from the ubiquitous Tom Hiddleston as Pine to new additions to the cast such as Diego Calva as the sinister Dos Santos to Camila Morrone as the sexy and enigmatic Roxana Bolaños, is uniformly excellent. The story veers off into preposterous territory more than once, but the overall production has enough wit and verve to win you over. The Night Manager was always one of le Carré’s most adventurous and action-packed tales, and this adaptation captures that spirit. It may not be a spy classic in the same mould as Smiley’s People, but Jonathan Pine might just be the spy we need for our screens in 2026.