Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine and Elizabeth Debicki as Jed Marshall
It’s shocking how much time I spend (and waste) scrolling through the streaming apps on my Apple TV looking for something fit to watch. How does so much junk get made? Who watches it? One of the most useful categories, actually, are the “trending” categories, or “Top 10 This Week.” If something is “trending,” I move on. It’s pretty much guaranteed that I won’t like anything that’s “trending.” Please pardon my snobbery, but I’m a refugee from popular culture, not a consumer of it.
And then a few days ago I came across a rare jewel on Amazon Prime Video. It’s the six-part BBC series “The Night Manager.” It’s a spy thriller, based on a novel by John le Carré, that was first shown on BBC One in 2016. I have no idea when it came to Amazon Prime Video.
The screenplay is flawless. The cast is superb, especially Olivia Colman as a not-so-posh Foreign Office manager with a north-of-England accent who just won’t quit, no matter what those above her (with accents much more posh, a kind of class struggle) do to try to stop her. Tom Hiddleston’s effortless sophistication (is that a requirement in a British spy thriller?) is fascinating to a provincial American like me. He came by his sophistication and his accent naturally, though. He was born in the Westminster district of London and has Eton and Cambridge on his résumé.
There are six one-hour episodes in the series. A season two is now being filmed (I was not able to find a release date), and I believe that a third season has been approved as well. The second and third seasons will go beyond the book by Le Carré, but the screenwriters of “The Night Manager” are so good that I’m confident that they’ll pull it off.
Olivia Colman as Angela Burr
Hi David 🙂
Have you seen Olivia Colman in ‘Wicked Little Letters’? She’s a riot and a half. One of the best films (heretical and fun) I’ve seen in awhile.
I also loved Elizabeth Debicki’s performance playing Diana in ‘The Crown’ (for which I believe she won a Golden Globe). I thought she handled an impossible role with some real heart and presence. Tom Hiddleston I remember most from Terence Davies’s ‘The Deep Blue Sea.’
Hi Malinda: Thank you for the suggestions! I had not planned to watch “Wicked Little Letters,” but I will check it out. After watching Debicki in “The Night Manager,” I can see how she could pull off Diana, which I had not planned to watch because I remember Diana so well as she was.