The Night Manager

There’s an illustrious history of John le Carre’ adaptations, and this six hour BBC entry in the cycle has the blessing of the spy-master himself, who even provides a cameo for the writer.

The first hour is all slow burn as Tom Hiddletone’s hotel manager Jonathan Pine gets a whiff of the danger posed by Hugh Laurie’s billionaire Richard Roper and his entourage. But a stunning plot-jump moves the action on at great pace, as Pine suddenly becomes part of Roper’s gang after rescuing his son, and works his way deep into the businessman’s empire, encouraged by UK intelligence in the form of Olivia Coleman.

If the recent film of le Carre’s Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy felt like a crash course in espionage, The Night Manager offers a careful, granular approach to detail that matches the original prose. The Night Manager is intense, sexy and compelling tv that’s just as good as any recent cinema spy-game.