After a decade away, The Night Manager is back—and screenwriter David Farr has a wild origin story for its return.
It started with a dream.
A boy in a Colombian monastery, a black car cresting a hill, and characters Farr somehow instantly recognized despite not thinking about the show in five years.
By morning, he’d scribbled down an entire second season—and realized he’d struck gold.
Why The Night Manager Took Ten Years to Return
When the original series premiered in 2016, it became instant event television. Based on John le Carré’s 1993 novel, the lavish spy thriller followed hotelier-turned-operative Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) as he infiltrated arms dealer Richard Roper’s (Hugh Laurie) criminal empire.
The show pulled in 10 million viewers, sold to 180 countries, and swept the Golden Globes. But there was one glaring problem: le Carré never wrote a sequel.
When it became a huge hit, there was appetite for a sequel. I wasn’t feeling it. People probably thought I was mad but I didn’t want to mess it up by knocking up a second one.
Farr, a lifelong le Carré devotee since watching Smiley’s People with his father at age 10, refused to compromise the show’s legacy. He turned down offers for years—until that vivid midnight vision changed everything.
Le Carré had died in 2020, but he’d given his blessing for continuation before his passing. That approval mattered deeply to Farr. Once Hiddleston signed on, production kicked into high gear.
Jonathan Pine Returns—Older, Scarred, and Running MI6’s “Night Owls”
Ten years have passed both in real life and in Pine’s world. The former undercover operative now directs MI6’s covert “Night Owls” unit, specializing in nocturnal surveillance of Mayfair hotels and casinos—gateways into terror cells and hostile networks.
He’s still a night manager. Just a different kind.
I knew Pine wouldn’t go back to ordinary life. The errant knight, on fire with moral fury, would need to stay in active service. Once he’d seen behind the curtain, there would be no going back.
Hiddleston describes his character as carrying “a few more scars on the outside and on the inside.” Pine has vowed to avoid the personal havoc he wreaked during his Roper mission, choosing instead what amounts to a half-life of controlled surveillance.
But suppression never lasts. When Pine spots one of Roper’s former associates working for Colombian arms dealer Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), everything erupts. Dos Santos uses a charitable foundation as cover—exactly like Roper—following in his predecessor’s deadly footsteps.
A Globe-Trotting Thriller With Bigger Action and Higher Stakes
With Prime Video co-producing and a reported £20 million budget, the new season matches—and potentially exceeds—the original’s scope. The opening episodes alone span Egypt, Barcelona, Miami, and Medellín.
We’re more Bourne than Mission: Impossible or Bond, more human than superhero, but there are spectacular sequences in beautiful places. Basically, escapism to keep us warm on wintry Sunday nights.
Hiddleston also does significantly more running this season—something he describes as “somatic catharsis” for Pine’s deep well of trauma. It clears his head, cools his heart, stills his racing mind.
His new partner Sally, played by Hayley Squires, brings grounded British humor that contrasts beautifully with Hiddleston’s smooth Etonian charm. Her London street-smarts and working-class perspective add texture reminiscent of classic le Carré.
Olivia Colman Returns as Handler Angela Burr
The reunion between Hiddleston and Colman—now an Oscar winner and national treasure—was a highlight for both actors. Le Carré described the agent-handler relationship as intensely intimate, almost familial.
Working with Olivia again was a joy. A lot has happened in both our lives – she won an Oscar and has become a national treasure – but we kept in touch along the way.
We first see Pine reuniting with Burr in flashback to identify a body—a moment that sets off the entire conspiracy unraveling throughout the season.
Enter Roxana Bolaños: Not Your Typical Femme Fatale
While Elizabeth Debicki’s Jed provided emotional grounding in season one, Camila Morrone’s Roxana brings something entirely different: a hustler who plays all sides while ultimately serving only herself.
Whenever you think she’s going to be the classic love interest or damsel in distress, she flips that on its head. She’s a real equal. She loves the game in the same way these men do.
Roxana helps Pine infiltrate Dos Santos’s operation, but her loyalty remains deliciously ambiguous. She’s smarter than the men give her credit for—and that’s precisely what makes her dangerous.
A Steamy, Sexually Fluid Triangle
The first series made headlines for Hiddleston’s intimate scenes with Debicki. This time, he’s caught in a complicated triangle with both Calva and Morrone.
Farr points out that le Carré always explored sexual fluidity in intelligence circles, dating back to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He argues that Pine and Roper’s relationship in season one carried homoerotic undertones.
It’s a complicated throuple. A power game in which they’re all on top at different times and all have guns pointed at each under the table.
The three actors grew so close they created a WhatsApp group called “Mi Amigos.” What gets shared? Morrone jokes: “If I told you, I’d have to kill you!“
How Ten Years Changed Everything—Including Geopolitics
For Farr, the decade between seasons proved creatively advantageous. Rarely do creators get such breathing room to let both characters and real-world context evolve.
The show explores arms deals as geopolitical leverage—from the controversial al-Yamamah contracts with Saudi Arabia to the uncomfortable reality that defense stocks plummeted when Ukraine peace talks seemed possible.
Since Iraq, everyone is wise to the fact that war makes money for certain people. There’s an infrastructure of power which is messy and dirty.
The Colombian setting became accidentally timely. South America—particularly Venezuela—has emerged as an unbelievably hot geopolitical area. While not about any specific political figure, Farr notes le Carré would absolutely cast “a scabrous eye” over how Britain and America currently wield foreign policy power.
Interestingly, the South American location loops back to le Carré’s original novel, which was actually set in Central America with Roper’s lair in Panama, dealing arms to Colombian drug runners.
A Rollercoaster That Promises Explosive Action
As Pine’s buried past becomes weaponized against him, he begins chasing ghosts. When a confidante is murdered and an operation goes tragically wrong, paranoia sets in. Is there a leak in his team? Are intelligence services illegally selling British weapons abroad?
Pine’s addiction to danger and false identities—”that’s why we love spies, right?“—explodes when his suppressed side unleashes.
We take you on a rollercoaster ride. Pine puts himself in extraordinary danger. We watch him risk, sacrifice, seduce and betray to unravel the mystery.
Squires, despite admitting she’d be “useless at spying in real life,” loved portraying Sally’s terrifying journey into fieldwork. Her only regret? Not being warned about all the running.
Farr promises the action builds significantly, with spectacular sequences in beautiful locations. And if he doesn’t get tabloids in a lather over the show’s sexual content? He’s done something wrong.
The Night Manager premieres on BBC One on New Year’s Day at 9:05pm—just in time to chase away winter’s chill with globe-trotting espionage, moral complexity, and one very determined spy who can’t quite leave the game behind.