The Night Manager Season 2 in Early Development

Last year’s lavishly-set miniseries The Night Manager was an impressive and slick television event. Adapting the 1993 novel of the same name by the iconic English espionage author John le Carré, the miniseries, a joint intercontinental offering from the BBC and AMC, starred Tom Hiddleston as an ex-soldier-turned hotelier who is thrust into the world of an amoral arms dealer played by Hugh Laurie. While, its six-episode run did come to a seemingly satisfying conclusion, fans will be delighted to hear that a second season could, nevertheless, be on the horizon.

A joint statement from producing studio The Ink Factory and broadcasters AMC and the BBC has announced that a prospective second season of The Night Manager is in early stages of development. Said statement also quickly points out that no commitment has been made to produce Season 2, with the triumvirate stating that “nothing is definite yet and we have nothing to announce.” However, it does somewhat corroborate what Season 1 director Susanne Bier told Broadcast earlier this week that the Season 2 script was “slowly being developed.” Yet, it does seem unusual and/or promising that a “grain of salt” type news tidbit was proliferated in an official statement.

The Night Manager utilized elegant aesthetics and suspenseful action, put through the lens of top-notch performances from a spectacular cast, with stars Hiddleston and Laurie supported by names like Olivia Colman, Elizabeth Debicki, Tom Hollander, Alistair Petrie, Adeel Akhtar and Tobias Menzies. It also reaped awards season riches, earning Primetime Emmys for director Susanne Bier and the musical score by Victor Reyes. The Golden Globes, however, yielded performance accolades, with wins for Tom Hiddleston (Best Actor), Hugh Laurie (Best Supporting Actor) and Oliva Colman (Best Supporting Actress).

While Season 1 of The Night Manager played out the events of the book, it did so with notable changes to the ending, seemingly delivering apparent just deserts to Laurie’s arms dealer Richard Roper as he’s whisked away by his cheated terrorist clientele; a stark contrast to the character’s more auspicious fate in le Carré’s novel. Yet, even with the miniseries succumbing to a more saccharine happy ending, things were left open-ended enough to see the further travails of Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine for Season 2. Of course, with such a task requiring the continuing compounding of anachronisms to le Carré’s source material, the risk runs higher of bastardizing the integrity of the story. Director Bier offers a cautious caveat to Broadcast (via Variety) explaining:

“We all very much want to do a season two but the thing we absolutely do not want is to do something that does not live up to the level of season one. That would be a really bad idea.”

Of course, the aspect of “money talks” will also come into play when it comes to the prospects for Season 2. The miniseries aired in over 180 countries, garnered accolades and seemed to evoke a generally positive response, barring the tangential outrage from le Carré purists over its array of alterations. With big-name stars now enjoying the loose schedule of recurring limited event television, exemplified by Tom Hardy’s recently-renewed FX series Taboo, it’s quite feasible that The Night Manager could become an intriguingly sophisticated recurring small screen side hustle for Tom Hiddleston. Whether that ultimately happens remains to be seen.