Hacker Cinema
The Night Manager
2016 · TV series · 2 seasons
Created by David Farr
Former British soldier Jonathan Pine navigates the shadowy recesses of Whitehall and Washington where an unholy alliance operates between the intelligence community and the secret arms trade. To infiltrate the inner circle of lethal arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper, Pine must himself become a criminal.
8 positive1 negative3 neutralfrom 12 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
12 comments on Hacker News
There's a British TV series called "The Night Manager" that seems to show how MI6 really works and what its priorities are.
My completely unscientific impression is that other services are making the effort to produce high-quality films and series, including Apple TV+ (Slow Horses, Silo, For All Mankind, Foundation, etc.), Max/HBO (Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm, GoT, The Last of Us, etc.), FX (Shogun, The Bear, The Old Man, Fargo, etc.), and AMC (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Night Manager, etc.). Whatever you think of the quality of shows in those services, they at least show genuine effort to make things that don't suck.
Damn. I was thinking I was ahead of this dude, since I have seen that.
But no, it was The Night Manager. Sigh.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1399664/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_14_act
The adaptation of "The Night Manager" is excellent IMO. It's a miniseries of sorts (only 6 episodes), however Hugh Laurie & Tom Hiddleston deliver top-notch performances. It's available on Prime Video and other streaming services in the US.
I would not be too surprised if some took offense to the imagery, especially of the svelte woman in the elevator with her one piece black outfit and shades. Too much Hollywood/Black Widow.
For me, I'd recommend watching "The Night Manager" some time. Specifically, Olivia Colman's role as Angela Burr. Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston certainly broke a few preconceptions for me, but she was the one I thought deserved some accolades for her character and how she portrayed it.
I watch it in part or whole, monthly (sometimes I swap it for the film, or for Smileys People...once I swapped it for The Night Manager, but that wasn't as comforting).
I have a large book collection and one of the cornerstones is a first edition of every John le Carre book published. I've read them all, and while he is probably best known for "Tinker Tailor ..." and "Smiley's People", I found "The Perfect Spy" to be just an exceptional work of literature - and at times it is also autobiographical (his father was a con man). I'm not surprised he was at times profoundly unhappy - in my experience, many highly creative people never find contentment.
The TV miniseries of "Tinker Tailor ...", "Smiley's People", "The Perfect Spy", and "The Night Manager" are just amazingly well done and highly recommended.
RIP David Cornwell.
I like to follow a thematic thread with books and movies. Here are a few recent ones that might interest the HN crowd:
* water issues/climate change in the Southwest:
- *Chinatown* (film) - *The Water Knife* by Paolo Bacigalupi (sci-fi novel, described as "*Chinatown* meets *Mad Max*)
- *The Cadillac Desert* by Marc Reisser (nonfiction, part of a plot element in *The Water Knife*
- *Cadillac Desert* PBS documentary[1]
* Dark espionage thrillers:
- *The Night Manager* by John LeCarre (novel, honestly not one of his best)
- *The Night Manager* (TV miniseries--much better than the book!)
- *The Ghost Writer* by Robert Harris (novel)
- *The Ghost Writer* (movie)
- *An Officer and a Spy* by Robert Harris (excellent and extensively researched historical novel, based on the Dreyfus Affair in Paris circa 1900)
- *J'Accuse (An Officer and a Spy)* (movie)
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkbebOhnCjA
He had a long and productive life, and I hope a happy one, but this is still a great loss.
So many of the books are magnificent in their depth. So are the filmed adaptations: the BBC productions of Smiley's People and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and the more recent film of the latter; and the Night Manager miniseries.
What has also given me a lot of pleasure was the BBC Radio productions of the eight George Smiley books [1]. They've often kept me company: sometimes on long car journeys, sometimes when I'm feeling contemplative but need distraction. Such a treat.
Thank you for it all Mr. Le Carré.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/smiley-season/
As a teenager, I picked out a copy of The Little Drummer Girl from a used book store quite by chance. I expected a simple spy action story, but what I read was a deep and anguishing examination of the personal impact of geopolitics on a someone’s identity.
If you’re new to Le Carré and want to tip your toe in, I’d recommend watching The Night Manager mini-series.
For someone who already enjoys Le Carré, it would be a shame to overlook A Perfect Spy, which is his most autobiographical and soul-wrenching work. Both the book and 1987 mini-series are excellent.
The Night Manager is one of my favorite novels. The miniseries adaptation starring Tom Hiddleston is really enjoyable too.
What I liked about "they spy who came in from the cold" was the pacing. Its small. "a small town in germany" is similary small, as is "the looking glass war" which has a nice quality that its really about inter-service rivalry more than the fieldman.
Peter Wright "spycatcher" made me think this stuff is more true than not. UCL (london) is next door to the kind of grey curtained (bomb-proof chain mail apparently) anonymous doors and blocks which we are told once housed outlier farms of the more elite services in the seventies. The big place down on the Thames up-ended all this, as did GCHQ's remake.
(Duncan Campbells writing on how the british state listened in pervasively to all telephone calls in the days of the microwave backbone up the spine of the UK is also worth reflecting on)
The atmosphere of the remake of 'tinker tailor' was really good. the grimy, flare-trouser, italian-design feels of the place was spot-on for time. I am less sure it was spot-on for what the secret services were like inside, but it felt like it should be: its what we want to believe. I've stayed in those grotty kings-cross hotels, they are alas, all too true.
I love all his books, but the later ones are frankly bloated. He's returned to small. His biography about his amoral father ("the perfect spy" is of course about the same family dynamic and probably has echoes of reality all through it) but you can't call autobiography novels, so thats out.
I thought "the russia house" was a better film adaptation than "the little drummer girl" and I thought "the night manager" was terribly adapted. All three are much the same as books I find.
"the constant gardener" is in some ways, the most depressing. I think it very probably speaks more truth than we would want.