‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 review: Tom Hiddleston’s tortured suave secret agent rocks sophomore season

When The Night Manager, based on John le Carré’s eponymous book, came out in 2016, it showed a new way forward for the espionage thriller. The 1993 novel is significant in le Carré’s oeuvre, as it represents a shift from the Cold War to the shady dealings of billionaire arms dealers propped up by a corrupt “espiocracy.”

In Jonathan Pine, le Carré fashions a protagonist different from the bureaucratic, tired Smiley. Pine goes after the arms dealer, Roper, as much for revenge as for a strong sense of right and wrong.

The six episode mini-series written by David Farr was shiny, sleek and smart. Apart from the gorgeous locations (Switzerland, Majorca, Morocco and the U.K.), the cast, led by the trifecta of Tom Hiddleston as Pine, Hugh Laurie as Roper, and Olivia Colman as Angela Burr, the intelligence officer determined to bring Roper down, was incendiary.

With le Carré insisting on no sequels, The Night Manager was always understood to be a mini-series. Even though le Carré gave the go-ahead to continue Pine’s story after watching the show, Farr waited for the right idea. The first three episodes of Season 2 prove emphatically that the wait has been worth it.

Following the events of Season 1 where Roper is put in prison for his evil deeds and killed four years later, Pine has a new name and identity. He is working in the MI6 surveillance unit, the Night Owls, and Burr has retired to France. On a routine surveillance, when Pine recognises a mercenary he met at Roper’s grand gala arms exhibition, he cannot help but follow up on it.

Rex Mayhew (Douglas Hodge), Pine’s boss, tells him to let it go, as Pine is dead for all intents and purposes. When Mayhew is killed, Pine goes off the reservation to follow the trail, which leads to a Colombian arms dealer Teddy (Diego Calva) a Roper devotee.

There is also the beautiful Roxanna (Camila Morrone), who is the fixer for Teddy’s shady shipments. With the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service Mayra Cavendish (Indira Varma), involved and Pine’s team compromised, the time has come for Pine to assume yet another secret identity and infiltrate Teddy’s operation.

With Sally (Hayley Squires) from the Night Owls on the outside and Basil Karapetian (Paul Chahidi), a senior MI6 officer providing what help he can off the books, Pine is pretty much alone in his quest to unearth Teddy’s patron. And when he does find out at the end of Episode 3, he is as gobsmacked as the rest of us.

The montage of Pine assuming the identity of a rich, dodgy banker, 43-year-old Matthew Ellis, is delicious eye candy as are the locations that include Spain, the U.K. and Colombia. The tension is ratcheted to unbearable levels, till we, like Sally, have to use a hand fan while $20 million appears, disappears, and reappears in the nick of time.

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The cherubic Danny (Noah Jupe), whose rescue was Pine’s way into Roper’s inner circle in Season 1, is older and wiser now, while the fact that Pine has named his cat Corky (after Roper’s dangerously damaged gopher), shows the past is a constant presence with him.

Hiddleston shrugs on his changeable Pine personality like a second skin (tight shirts and all), while Calva is suitably scary and Morrone the right amount of sultry. In the nine years since Season 1, thrillers such as The Agency and The Day of the Jackal have adopted similar elements, so Season 2 does not carry the same “breaking new ground” aura.

However, with its glossy shine, intelligent while not being indulgent plotting, and superb cast and locations, it is a worthy sophomore season to the multiple award winning show.

The Night Manager is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video with fresh episodes dropping every week till February 1

Published – January 13, 2026 06:08 pm IST