TV viewers have become accustomed to increasingly lengthy waits between seasons of their favourite shows. Stranger Things took three years between its fourth and fifth seasons, while Euphoria will be back next year, more than four years after it was last on air. But BBC One’s The Night Manager – which returns this week after a 10-year hiatus – takes the biscuit. When last we followed the adventures of Tom Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine, David Cameron and Barack Obama were still in office, the Paris Climate Accords had just been adopted, and Covid-19 was just a glint in a pangolin’s eye. So, you’d be forgiven for not knowing quite what to expect from the return of John Le Carré’s taciturn hero.
Several years on from the events of the first season, Pine – now known as Alex Goodwin – is leading a subdivision of MI6 dedicated to nocturnal surveillance. “Nothing above the parapet,” Pine’s mentor Rex (Douglas Hodge) warns him. “That face is too pretty to lose.” But Pine is still transparently haunted by the mission that brought down villainous arms dealer Richard Roper, and when a chance encounter resurfaces memories from his time embedded in the Roper operation, Pine sets off on a quest for justice. Or is it vengeance? A man calling himself “the true disciple of Richard Roper” is running guns into Colombia, and nobody at MI6 seems half as concerned as Pine. Thus begins a cross-continental journey, back into the dark heart of the international weapons trade.
