Ten years is a long time in television, and for fans of espionage thrillers, it’s felt even longer waiting for the return of The Night Manager. The first season, which burst onto BBC One screens in 2016, was a heady mix of luxury, suspense, and star power—Tom Hiddleston’s inscrutable Jonathan Pine, Hugh Laurie’s chillingly evil Richard Roper, and Olivia Colman’s hard-boiled MI6 handler Angela Burr. Adapted from John le Carré’s 1993 novel, the six-episode series was a hit, earning 36 award nominations, including Golden Globes for its leads. It was a complete story, a rare thing in the age of endless sequels, and it seemed to close the book on Pine’s world of high-stakes arms dealing and double-crosses.
Yet here we are, a decade later, with The Night Manager returning for a second season—one that’s not based on le Carré’s work, but instead launches Pine into a fresh narrative. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the BBC announced the show’s return in 2024, with Amazon Prime Video stepping in as the new distributor. The anticipation built steadily, but some critics wondered whether the property needed revisiting. Still, on January 11, 2026, the first three episodes of the new season landed on Prime Video, with weekly episodes to follow.
The world, both on screen and off, has changed in the intervening years. The original season’s opulence—Swiss hotels, Mallorcan villas, sharply pressed shirts—helped define a new era of spy drama. As The Atlantic noted, the show retained le Carré’s trademark complexity but quickened the pace for modern audiences. It was cinematic, lavish, and serious, with Pine’s character slowly revealing his depths rather than charging into action. The series paved the way for a wave of stylish espionage shows, including The Little Drummer Girl and Killing Eve.
But the spy genre didn’t stand still. In the past decade, grittier, more down-to-earth series like Apple TV’s Slow Horses—adapted from Mick Herron’s novels—have captured imaginations. These stories focus on the failings and foibles of intelligence agents, painting them as ordinary people with mortgages and insecurities, far from the glamorous world Pine once inhabited. The contrast is striking: where The Night Manager offers escapist intrigue and luxury, Slow Horses revels in the mundane, the bureaucratic, and the flawed. As the genre has evolved, the pressure on The Night Manager’s return has only grown.
Season 2 picks up nine years after the events of the first, with Jonathan Pine no longer working in hotels. Instead, he leads a remote surveillance squad within the Foreign Office known as the Night Owls. His new life is quieter, more anonymous, yet the ghosts of his past—especially the shadow of Richard Roper—still haunt him. The season opens with Pine and Angela Burr identifying Roper’s body in Syria, a nod to the consequences of their previous actions. Thanks to Pine, Roper had been held captive for years by powerful creditors before meeting his end.
But peace is fleeting. When an old associate of Roper’s reappears, Pine is drawn back into the fray, this time in Colombia. His target: Teddy Dos Santos, a charismatic arms magnate played by Diego Calva. Colombia, with its lush jungles and historic cities, provides a visually stunning backdrop—and a real-world context, given the country’s recent history of civil unrest and its 2016 peace agreement. The shift in setting also allows the show to revisit the original novel’s themes of Western intervention and economic exploitation in South America, making the narrative feel eerily timely amid current global tensions.
Pine’s new team includes the capable but underwritten Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone), a Miami-based shipping broker with Colombian roots, and Mayra Cavendish (Indira Varma), his severe new boss. Other colleagues—Waleed (Anil Desai), Basil (Paul Chahidi), and Sally (Hayley Squires)—round out the Night Owls, though they often serve as accessories to Pine’s obsessive quest for closure. As Variety observed, Pine’s character remains a chameleonic figure, well-suited to espionage but inherently unmemorable as a hero. The show’s Bond-inspired opening credits, with soaring strings and shattering rosaries, feel at odds with Pine’s increasingly tortured state.
Despite the new narrative and cast, much of the show’s DNA remains intact. The second season still leans into the allure of international locations—London, Spain, Colombia—delivering the “hotel porn” and escapist intrigue fans expect. Yet the tone is heavier, the stakes more personal. Pine, now operating under the alias Alex Goodwin, is forced into off-the-books operations that quickly turn tragic. As The Hollywood Reporter points out, the first half of the season is heavy with callbacks to the original, with characters constantly referencing Roper and the events of a decade ago. This reliance on nostalgia slows the pace initially, but the story picks up as Pine’s mission in Colombia intensifies.
The new villain, Teddy Dos Santos, is both a homage to and a departure from Laurie’s Roper. Calva’s performance grows in confidence as the season progresses, his character balancing black market dealings with charitable endeavors. The dynamic between Pine and Teddy is charged, with hints of mutual respect and rivalry. Meanwhile, Pine’s relationships with his team—especially Roxana and Sally—add layers of tension and loyalty, though some characters, like Angela Burr and Mayra Cavendish, feel underutilized.
Behind the camera, Georgi Banks-Davies steps in as director, replacing Susanne Bier, who won an Emmy for the first season. Creator David Farr returns to steer the story into new territory, blending le Carré’s legacy with contemporary geopolitical concerns. The production values remain high, and the suspense set pieces in the latter half of the season are among the show’s best. However, the authenticity of the Colombian setting is occasionally questioned, with few main Colombian characters played by Colombian actors.
Perhaps the most significant change is the show’s willingness to embrace ongoing storytelling. Unlike the self-contained first season, Season 2 ends on a dark cliffhanger, setting up an already announced third season. Both The Night Manager and Slow Horses have been renewed for at least one more outing, suggesting that audiences still crave both high-gloss and down-to-earth spy tales.
So, was the wait worth it? The answer depends on what viewers want from their espionage. For those seeking opulence, intrigue, and a return to familiar faces, The Night Manager delivers. For others, the show’s nostalgia and slower pace may feel like a relic of a bygone era. But with Tom Hiddleston’s nuanced performance at its center and a story that’s suddenly, almost accidentally, relevant, the series proves there’s still life in the old spy yet.
As the genre forks between high and low, glamour and grit, one thing is clear: whether in the boardrooms of London or the jungles of Colombia, the world of espionage remains as captivating—and as dangerous—as ever.
