The Night Manager: Le Carré Lite, starring Tom Hiddleston

The Binge — Jessica Zafra

DEVOTEES of the spy novelist John le Carré will tell you that there’s prime le Carré — his magnificent Cold War novels — and late period le Carré — the yarns which are regarded with affection rather than reverence. At last count, 15 le Carré works have been adapted for film and television; two of these exemplify the difference between the prime and late periods.

The 1979 BBC series based on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is regarded by many as the finest screen version of le Carré. Watching the seven-part series is almost exactly like reading the book: it requires you to think like a spy and see the lies within the lies that eventually point to the truth. When they called their domain “Intelligence,” they weren’t kidding. Half the time you didn’t know what was going on, and neither did the players engaged in deadly mind games.

Today’s viewers, brought up on relentless action and entertainment, would find the series very slow going. The British Secret Intelligence Service is “The Circus,” the American CIA “the cousins,” and the Soviet spies are led by a man codenamed Karla, who has planted a mole in The Circus. George Smiley, the deputy head of British intelligence, is summoned out of retirement to root out this mole. The great Alec Guiness plays Smiley like a very mild-mannered Obi-Wan Kenobi whose light saber is his brain. As the series proceeds, moving from one grotty, dispiriting location to the next, something clicks in the viewer’s brain and yells, “A-ha!” Then it becomes so exciting it’s almost unbearable. Hey, it’s not paranoia if they really are after you.

In contrast, the BBC’s new series The Night Manager plays like the fall runway shows in Milan. Directed by the Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier (In A Better World), The Night Manager is as slick and good-looking as a Bond movie. In a departure from the novel, it begins during the Arab Spring uprising that overthrew Mubarak in Egypt. Tom Hiddleston, tall, lean, handsome, posh, walks through a street demonstration and up to a police barrier. Is he someone important, an embassy official? No, he’s Jonathan Pine, a former soldier now employed as the night manager of a luxury hotel, on the way to his shift. This is confusing, because shouldn’t someone like that be required to work in the day, during peak hours when everyone can see him?

Women are constantly trying to seduce Jonathan Pine, luring him up to their hotel rooms on some pretext, or bathing in front of him. One of them sets the plot in motion by giving him a copy of sensitive information about the famed philanthropist Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). She calls Roper “the worst man in the world,” which I thought a bit extreme for someone who was only guilty of over-enthusiastic thumbs-up movie reviews, and also rather lazy writing. It turns out that Roper, played by Hugh Laurie as a more menacing Dr. House, is using his humanitarian activities as a cover for his real line of business.

Initially Pine comes across as the perfect patsy whose attempt to be a white knight ends in disaster. He alerts a friend at the embassy (Russell Tovey, cleaning up very nicely), who advises him not to get involved. However, the information lands on the desk of a dissatisfied, underfunded, heavily pregnant intelligence agent Mrs. Burr (Olivia Colman, brilliant in Broadchurch). She does not forget, and when Pine and Roper encounter each other four years later at another luxury hotel in Switzerland, she’s ready whether Pine is or not.

Critics who decry the increasing dominance of Oxbridge alumni in show business will find plenty to support their gripes in The Night Manager. Four of the leads — Hiddleston, Laurie, Colman, and the alarming Tom Hollander — studied at Cambridge, and Hiddleston and Laurie are Old Etonians. Then again, the double agents who inspired le Carré’s Smiley vs. Karla novels were known as the “Cambridge Four.”

Reviews of the first episode have predicted a general clamoring for Hiddleston to be the next James Bond. I don’t see it. He doesn’t look like a killer, he’s too polite and nice. Of course Hiddleston is the boyfriend of the Internet, and his every smile and gesture is analyzed and rendered as GIFs on Tumblr. He was an electrifying Coriolanus in the Donmar Warehouse production that was broadcast live in cinemas, and a contemplative Henry V in The Hollow Crown. He has been the handsome, rather diffident foil to the luminous Rachel Weisz in Terence Davies’s The Deep Blue Sea, the fabulous Tilda Swinton in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, and the ferocious Jessica Chastain in Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak.

Hiddleston made the ladies more scintillating through his presence, but in each case his character seemed weak and not in charge of his own destiny. They seemed like iterations of his most-recognized role to date: Loki in Marvel’s Thor and Avengers movies. While technically a villain, Loki is too adorable to fear or hate: he’s a naughty schoolboy rebelling against his parents. Good for Tumblr and writers of fan fiction, but limiting for such an intelligent and gifted actor. He needs a character who is free to be himself, unshackled from the past, who owns his own flaws and bad decisions. Then he will become the star his online legions expect him to be: in the league of Redmayne and Cumberbatch. Will The Night Manager be that role?

If Tinker, Tailor told the viewers nothing, The Night Manager gives them more information than they need. You know that Roper’s girlfriend Jed (Elizabeth Debicki of the unhurried line readings in The Man from UNCLE) will end up in bed with Pine, because they belong to the same species of tall and gorgeous. You know that Tom Hiddleston will flash a muscular torso, because that’s the BBC’s thing now. And you know Tom Hollander as Roper’s sidekick Corcoran will make cutting remarks, because he is so good at chopping taller men off at the knees. If it’s a masterful spy drama you want, look up the 1979 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. For sexy entertainment, ring up The Night Manager.

Contact the author at TVatemyday@gmail.com.

Read her work every week at BusinessWorld, every day at JessicaRulestheUniverse.com.