The Night Manager

Each weekly episode of The Night Manager will feel too short. But the pleasure is so great that we should probably thank AMC for letting it stretch out over six weeks.

The Night Manager stands tall as a stand-alone gem that elevates the cat-and-mouse game without ever entrapping itself. Bravo.

Writer David Farr updated le Carre's novel with expert care, and his script is stunningly realized by a sensational cast guided by the unerring direction of Susanne Bier. Indeed, just about everything goes right in this sexy, riveting and suspenseful miniseries.

The Night Manager has something for everyone--fans of spy craft, fans of cinematic television, fans of good storytelling or just of Tom Hiddleston (or Hugh Laurie, for that matter). It will pull you into its story completely and allow you inhabit its world, but at a terrible cost: brevity.

The real le Carré unreels here, with savvy updates (re-gendering the book’s male spy boss) strengthening his nail-biting storytelling and ever keen focus on the toxic bureaucracy behind even the most opulent intrigue.

A clever fable of heroic renewal, The Night Manager gives us a redemptive journey into a heart of darkness and a portrait of a genre mired in shadow pining for daylight.

The Night Manager is easily the best miniseries of the year--in a year packed with monumental ones. Hiddleston, Laurie and Bier aren’t just adding another credit to their resumes. They’re part of a series that’s quite likely a game changer.

The Night Manager combines luxurious production with razor-sharp writing, and it's brought to life by a brilliant cast, headed by Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie.

It's more than slick. The spy tale is a great character study built on concerns about how superpowers, intelligence communities and organized crime operate and what the quest for revenge can do to decent people.

The Night Manager overcomes cliches, objections and a few wobbly American accents, in large part thanks to the combined appeal and talents of Hiddleston, Colman, Laurie and Hollander. Together, they prove that action TV can be made at a high level of quality, and quality TV can be entertaining.

The miniseries captures this Le Carré essence, but also the story’s breathless suspense. The pace is slow, nobody raises their voice--and yet you’re glued to the screen.

The production and performances really do deserve such adulation, but the miniseries itself feels like a rather by-the-book spy story--which, notably, it is; an acknowledgment that means even more when you consider the author of said book is John le Carre.

We’ve seen this all before. The good guy’s descent into darkness, the cat-and-mouse thriller, the escapist action series, the on-location porn. Does The Night Manager do it any better than we’re used to? Sure, quite often. But at least it almost never does it any worse.

This is great stuff. And, at just six episodes, it's a great length.

Unapologetically sleeker and more sentimental than any George Smiley tale, and streamlined to the point of simplicity when compared with the recent "London Spy," it is tense but linear, clearly framed to take full advantage of its stars' strengths and, it must be said, their cross-demographic fan base.

The Night Manager knows exactly what kind of entertainment it wants to be: escapism with just enough of a dark edge to pass for art. And it stays as focused on its mission as Pine does on his.

[A] thoroughly enjoyable miniseries.

The Night Manager is slick, but can occasionally veer into hollowness. ... This lush miniseries nevertheless has much to recommend it. Tom Hollander, David Harewood and Douglas Hodge capably round out the fine cast, and as it heads into the middle of its run, it weaves together a generally exciting cat-and-mouse tale, full of skulduggery in elegant homes, classy restaurants and shady ports.

The Night Manager has been adapted and updated into a thrillingly suspenseful Mission: Impossible playing out on a grand international canvas. [18 Apr-1 May 2016, p.18]

Roper is never much more than a menacingly jovial monster, and Pine never earns the soulful self-loathing Hiddleston brings to the role. But there’s something to be said for surface pleasures, especially when they’re this well dressed.

[The Night Manager] makes the most of some gorgeous spots. Viewers, however, may find themselves anticipating the plot. Hiddleston is the draw and the catch. With a less capable lead, this story would only be mildly interesting. ... He proves here he’s ready to serve her majesty’s secret service and then some.

The story never entirely comes together, but it's so much fun watching the supporting cast that coherence almost seems besides the point.

Hollander more than succeeds in making Corkoran completely repulsive, despite the fact that the character is unwaveringly loyal and smart enough to realize Pine isn’t who he seems to be. That said, the role is offensively homophobic. ... Otherwise, The Night Manager is a class act, not only because of the care that has gone into the writing, direction and performances, but in the great respect the creators show to the quality of le Carré’s novel.

The Night Manager is concerned with the complications and accommodations made to cope with man-made, humanitarian disasters. But all the permutations of its plot, however grisly and threatening, never dominate the show in the way they are meant to.

Any show that refers to the bad guy as “the worst man in the world” may not be terribly subtle, but the brisk pacing and Hiddleston’s regular displays of sly spy trickery and vigorous punches to the soft guts of decadent baddies will really get a viewer’s pulse quickening.

The Night Manager applies the pleasing fundamentals of pulp spycraft to the banal world of corporate evil.

The Night Manager is a treat. ... For all its locations, the storytelling canvas is somehow small. And there are some ludicrous plot holes and twists which nudge the The Night Manager in a campy Bond direction. But it never strays near comedy, which makes the six episodes pretty much a nonstop fear-fest.

Writer David Farr and director Susanne Bier make the undercover work and the spy-agency infighting equally riveting, sustaining the suspense all the way to the inevitable (if slightly disappointing) end.

While it's a well-produced and entertaining series, it's disappointing to see writers and filmmakers heading back to the well to rehash lesser John le Carré works when current spy novelists like Olen Steinhauer, Charles Cumming, and Chris Pavone have modern novels that could easily be adapted--and likely with superior results.

[A] glossy, generic adaptation.