There’s something in the water here in the UK (other than sewage overflow), which has turned the TV viewing public into gluttons for subterfuge. Deception, betrayal, fragile alliances: these descriptors could be applied equally to both of 2026’s biggest shows, The Traitors and The Night Manager, which concluded its second series tonight. But did Tom Hiddleston’s mystery man get banished from the Amazonian jungle? Or did he manage to turn the tables on his treacherous opponent?
With Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) on the verge of an arms deal that will destabilise Colombia’s peace and (somehow) repay his Syrian creditors, focus moves to the seductive powers of Jonathan Pine. Successfully “turning” Roper’s pouting illegitimate son and obedient lieutenant Teddy (Diego Calva) allows Pine to inveigle his way into the Colombian rebels’ operation. “You can be free,” Pine implores Teddy. “But not with him alive.” Sadly, for Teddy, it is Roper who comes out on top/ “I forgive your immortal soul,” he whispers to his son, before putting a bullet into his forehead. “But not your mortal one.” There is no mercy, either, for Olivia Colman’s Angela Burr, whose power struggle with MI5 Chief Mayra Cavendish (Indira Varma), ends with her bleeding out in the French snow. And so the series, which seemed to be building towards some retribution, ends with Roper restored, rolling through the Cotswolds in a blacked-out Range Rover, while it is Pine’s turn to end a season bruised, bloodied and running for his life. So much for justice.
This lack of resolution contrasts with the ending of the show’s first season. There, Richard Onslow Roper – a grippingly malevolent force – was delivered into the merciless hands of his enemies by the combined forces of Burr and Pine. It felt a reasonable conclusion (somewhat more definite than the ending of le Carré’s novel) and remained that way for 10 years and three episodes. But just as Tom needs Jerry, Holmes needs Moriarty and Neo needs Agent Smith, The Night Manager needs Richard Roper. Hugh Laurie’s return, for the second half of this series, has injected it with renewed energy. He has a weight of charisma that Hiddleston lacks; Roper chews the scenery, while Pine remains, true to his name, immovably wooden. “I pride myself on being an adaptable man,” he purrs, sinisterly. “When circumstances demand it, I shed a skin and pick up a new one.”
The return of Roper to narrative primacy meant that characters like Camila Morrone’s Roxy, Paul Chahidi’s Basil and Hayley Squires’s Sally are relegated to bit parts in the denouement. At its heart, this is a story about fathers and sons – both Roper and the child he fathered in the mountains of Colombia, and Roper and the superspy he engendered over the course of the first season’s rough apprenticeship. “You’re a real big game hunter, aren’t you Jonathan,” he observes. “First my American sweetheart, now my very own son.” But Pine’s relationship with Teddy feels far less plausible than his earlier intrigue with Jed, Roper’s willowy consort played by Elizabeth Debicki. Indeed, Teddy’s damascene conversion comes across as rushed and improbable. He regresses from hard-bitten guerilla leader to a blubbering daddy’s boy. Pine’s sympathy for Teddy, too, seems to forget the events of earlier episodes, where Teddy blew Pine’s beloved colleagues to smithereens. I guess all is forgiven if you have those cheekbones?
These twisting loyalties reveal a lack of integrity to Le Carré’s source material. Above all else, Le Carré was a ferociously plausible writer. His situations could have been lifted from the redacted files of British Intelligence, and his characters always seemed motivated by distinctly human foibles. Pride, fear, envy, anger, revenge. But, in this second series, Pine has become a dead-eyed monomaniac, and while Roper’s desire to return home, to England, feels tangible, his plan – brokering continental chaos in South America – is wild and unruly. Despite the huge gap between the first and second series of The Night Manager, this run of episodes has ended up feeling like a bridge to the show’s inevitable third season where Roper will, once again, be in a position of power and Pine, once again, the outsider nipping at his heels.
None of this is to say that these six episodes have been without their charms. Hiddleston is a suave cypher, and, in a world where Amazon has bought James Bond, it’s nice to see the BBC investing in a very British spy franchise. But that simple pleasure of the original The Night Manager – will he be rumbled? – has been diluted by a messy, high stakes plot. For all the Medellin MacGuffins (the “state-of-the-art electromagnetic pulse weapon” is straight out of Mission: Impossible), this series was, ultimately, the redemption of Richard Roper. Somehow, with the viewing public suitably enthralled, I doubt we’ll have to wait another decade for his downfall.
