For screenwriter David Farr, The Night Manager’s return is a dream come true. Literally. “Having not thought about the show for five years, a vivid image came to me in bed one night,” he says. “I saw a boy in a Colombian monastery, waiting for a black car to come over the hill. For some bizarre reason, I knew who those characters were. Suddenly, I was half-awake and the rest came flying out of me. I wrote it all down in case I forgot. In the morning, I looked at my notes and thought: ‘This is good, actually.’”
He’s not wrong. It’s a special drama that can leave a decade-long gap between series but still be welcomed back with widespread excitement. It’s testament to The Night Manager’s quality that its comeback is the first must-watch show of 2026.
The 2016 debut run, based on John le Carré’s 1993 novel – the first he wrote after the collapse of the Soviet Union – followed hotelier turned spy Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) as he went undercover to bring down arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), AKA “the worst man in the world”. Farr’s lavish adaptation became event TV, pulling in 10 million viewers and selling to 180 countries. Hiddleston, Laurie and Olivia Colman all won Golden Globes for their performances. But there was a small problem: there wasn’t another book.
“I’ve been a Le Carré fan since watching Smiley’s People with my Dad when I was 10,” says Farr. “When I was asked to adapt The Night Manager, I was scared. But I had clear ideas, like relocating it to the Arab spring, and Le Carré loved that. There was never a discussion of more. It was one-and-done. 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.”
‘More chiselled and manly’ … Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager, season two. Photograph: Des Willie/BBC/Ink Factory
Years later came that fateful dream. “Le Carré died in 2020 but he’d given his blessing to a second season, which was important,” says Farr. “Tom [Hiddleston] was a bit like me. Quite rightly, he didn’t want to destroy a beautiful thing by doing something less beautiful. When he came onboard, we were away.”
“I’d always hoped I might return to the role,” says Hiddleston. “David’s vision made that possibility real. Ten years have passed and they haven’t been easy – in the world, in this country, for all of us. Imagine how much more complex they’ve been for those working in the security and intelligence services. To return to the character of Pine, while carrying my own experience of the last decade, was a thrilling prospect.”
We meet Pine again in flashback, reuniting with former handler Angela Burr (Colman) to identify a body. In present-day London, he’s director of MI6’s covert “Night Owls” unit. “I knew Pine wouldn’t go back to ordinary life,” says Hiddleston. “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.”
His team specialise in nocturnal surveillance – mainly of Mayfair hotels and casinos, which provide a way into terror cells and hostile networks. He’s still a night manager, just a different type. “We’re watchers,” says his sidekick Sally (Hayley Squires). “We’re not the show.” Their work is “not the most glamorous or dramatic”, a superior says smugly. Just you wait.
Pine’s past remains buried until he spots one of Roper’s former footsoldiers somewhere unexpected. Investigating off the books, the team learn he’s now a fixer for South American cartels – notably Colombian arms dealer Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva). Using a charitable foundation as cover for his criminality, just like Roper did, Dos Santos is following in his predecessor’s destructive footsteps.
‘Working with Olivia again was a joy’ … Hiddleston with Olivia Colman in The Night Manager. Photograph: Des Willie/BBC/Ink Factory
As the past is weaponised against him, Pine begins to feel like he’s chasing ghosts. When a confidante is murdered and an operation goes tragically wrong, Pine doesn’t know who to trust. Is there a leak in his team? Are the intelligence services illegally selling British weapons abroad? With the aid of glamorous businesswoman Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone), he sets out to infiltrate Dos Santos’s operation.
With a reported £20m budget, the first series was a location-hopping epic. The new run, co-produced by deep-pocketed Prime Video, is equally globe-trotting. The opening two episodes alone take us to Egypt, Barcelona, Miami and Medellín. “The action builds significantly,” says Farr. “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 spends a lot of time running. Is he the new Tom Cruise? “I can’t speak for the other Tom,” he laughs. “I stand only in awe and admiration. But we spoke about Pine’s need to run as a kind of somatic catharsis. There’s a deep well of pain and trauma at the centre of him. His running clears his head, cools his heart, stills his racing mind.”
‘Addicted to danger’ … Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager. Photograph: Des Willie/BBC/Ink Factory
He relished reuniting with Colman. “Working with Olivia again was a joy,” he says. “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. Le Carré described the relationship between agent and handler as so intimate, it almost feels familial.”
A welcome dose of down-to-earth humour is added by Squires’s Sally, whose London street-smarts contrast with Hiddleston’s smooth Etonian charm. “I really enjoyed writing Sally,” says Farr. “She lends Britishness which it really needs. A bit of old-fashioned Le Carré.”
“Me and Tom are an unusual pairing,” says Squires. “But it works. From the off, Sally senses there’s something more to Pine. When she finds out the truth, she makes a conscious decision to follow him into the field. The journey she goes on is terrifying but allows her to understand her own capabilities. I’d be useless at spying in real life. My nerves wouldn’t take it. That made it particularly fun to act.” She grins. “I underestimated the amount of running I’d have to do, though. I wish I’d been warned about that.”
Series one starred Elizabeth Debicki as Roper’s girlfriend Jed. The sequel has a more kickass femme fatale in Morrone. “I love this new version of the female lead,” Morrone says. “Roxana is something fresh in espionage fiction. She’s a hustler, smarter than the men give her credit for. Constantly playing both sides but really, the only side she’s on is her own. 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. And she has a backstory which makes her a firecracker character.”
The 2026 Pine is older and wiser but no less lethal. As Hiddleston puts it, “He has a few more scars on the outside and on the inside.” Farr agrees: “He’s vowed that the havoc he wreaked in people’s lives isn’t going to happen again. He’s slightly addicted to danger and totally addicted to false identities – that’s why we love spies, right? – but he’s opted to live a safe, quiet life. But for Pine, that’s a half-life. When he unleashes that suppressed side of himself, it’s explosive.”
‘I’d be useless at spying in real life’ … Hayley Squires as Sally in The Night Manager season two. Photograph: Des Willie/BBC/Ink Factory
“We take you on a rollercoaster ride,” promises Hiddleston. “Pine puts himself in extraordinary danger. We watch him risk, sacrifice, seduce and betray to unravel the mystery. I hope audiences will be thrilled by the chase.”
For Farr, the decade between series had its creative advantages. “It’s a timescale you rarely get in film or TV, which was a real gift. The past is quite distant but it haunts Pine. Tom found that fascinating. He looks different, too. More chiselled and manly. Rewatch the first series and he looks like a puppy!”
Pine himself has changed but so has the world. Farr appreciated the chance to reflect 10 years of global upheaval. “This show is about arms deals and how they’re used as geopolitical leverage, sometimes in truly terrible ways. It happened with the al-Yamamah contracts [under which the UK government sold arms to Saudi Arabia], which were shameful. More recently, when it looked like Ukraine might have a peace deal, share prices of defence firms across Europe plummeted. 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. Richard Roper was the embodiment of that. Now it’s become manifest. Look at the bombs dropped on Gaza in the last two years. The other thing that’s changed is the rise of populism and the chaos that brings.”
The backdrop of Colombia is accidentally timely. “It’s become more topical than we imagined. South America is now an unbelievably hot area, especially Venezuela. This show is not in any sense about Donald Trump but Le Carré would absolutely be casting a scabrous eye over how Britain and America are using certain levers of power in foreign policy.” The new setting also loops back to the source material. “The novel is actually set in Central America,” says Farr. “I shifted it to the Arab world but Roper’s lair was originally in Panama and he dealt arms to Colombian drug runners. Now we’ve come full circle.”
‘We’ve come full circle’ … Tom Hollander, Elizabeth Debicki and Hugh Laurie in season one of The Night Manager, 2016. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy
The first series hit headlines for Hiddleston’s bare-bottomed sex scenes with Debicki. This time, he’s torn between Calva and Morrone. “That gets very hot,” says Farr. “The intelligence world has always been a sexually fluid place. Le Carré explored it in his books, going right back to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I’d argue that in the first series, Pine and Roper’s relationship was slightly homoerotic. I wanted to explore the new sexual fluidity and Diego Calva was perfect for that. He has this innate openness and availability. So yes, there’s a steamy triangle going on.” Can we expect Daily Mail outrage again? Farr laughs. “If I don’t get the Daily Mail in a lather, I’ve done something wrong!”
“It’s a complicated throuple,” says Morrone. “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, there’s now a Night Manager WhatsApp group. “Tom created it and it’s called Mi Amigos,” says Morrone. “It’s him, Diego and I, so your dream throuple! What gets sent around? If I told you, I’d have to kill you!”
The Night Manager is on BBC One on New Year’s Day at 9.05pm.
