New Spy Drama 'The Night Manager' Is TV's Attempt at Making a Slow-Burn Bourne

The Night Manager is a proper British spy drama. It's a six-part adaptation of John le Carré's 1993 spy novel of the same name and it stars a cast of Hollywood A-listers and BAFTA-baiters including Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston, and Olivia Colman. Former British soldier Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston) is recruited to get close to arms dealer Richard Roper (Laurie) and risks becoming a criminal himself in the process. It exists between Whitehall and Washington, and tells the story of the transatlantic powerhouses alliance with the secret arms trade.

We sat down with screenwriter David Farr, who told VICE about the difficulties of adapting le Carré's work for the modern era and how the "dodgy deals" of the modern political landscape in Britain inspired his work.

VICE: You've updated The Night Manager to take place in 2011 around the Arab Spring. What was the thinking behind that shift?
David: I had a strong reaction to the anger in the book, which felt very contemporary to me. le Carré was angry about British meddling in Latin American politics when he wrote the original in the 90s, specifically their complicit or foolish enabling of the arms and drugs trade. That issue is as important as it ever was but the focus of that has moved to the Middle East. I actually went and met le Carré and proposed the idea to him, expecting him to say no. I got an immediate yes, though, and we spent two hours collaborating on how to do it.

What was that like? Is he still as sharp as he was?
We met in a pub in north London. He's still ferociously quick, yes. Intimidatingly so. One of my earliest memories is watching Smileys People with my dad in 1982. Much of my life has been spent writing in that area and he's a big reason for that.

The world of arms dealers is alien to many of us. What research did you do into arms dealers and the world they inhabit?
I did a lot of internet research on people like Victor Bout, the legendary arms dealer. I also find Mark Thatcher to be very interesting. That's not to say in any way that he's a proven arms dealer, because I don't think that's the case, but he's a man of somewhat shady character who has lived in exile for 30-plus years and has dabbled in economic and sometimes military colonialism. He and Hugh Laurie's character, Richard Roper, both have opaque global connections but also links to the establishment.

So what does The Night Manager tell us about the British establishment in 2016?
We live in an era where it feels as though the establishment is as rock solid as it ever was. The deeper currents of the establishment's goals remain very similar. It is an empirical power that does not have the same leverage that it used to, so uses covert ways in finding it. If that means doing some dodgy deals then it will do that. In terms of this adaptation, it sees one evil, that is, Islamic extremism, and attempts to keep it at bay. To do so it is also prepared to collaborate with less tangible evils.

le Carré has always been extremely strong on the British establishment and its tendrils around the world. Particularly its abilities to use orthodox and rogue elements to perpetuate its economic and strategic goals. One of the key debates in the series is whether Roper is using the establishment or whether they are using him. Roper is extremely charismatic, especially in the hands of Hugh Laurie. He is a devil with the best lines and has an intoxicating effect on Tom Hiddleston's character Jonathan Pine, but also on the viewer.

Did you face any opposition from the BBC while making a series that challenges the establishment in this way?
Actually not, I am proud to say. The only thing I was careful about was not to demonize any political element abroad. The point is to show how the British establishment can exploit something like the Arab Spring to perpetuate their own strategic goal.

Was it hard to adapt the story for the modern era?
Well one of the first scenes of the book is set in Egypt. So I said let's keep it in Egypt and it works perfectly. Unlike le Carré's Cold War novels, which have an immovable quality, The Night Manager is of the modern era. It's about capitalism, economic colonialism and arms dealing.

How much of the back story of the Arab Spring does this go into? For a predominantly white drama, that feels like dangerous territory.
Yeah, absolutely. To be clear, this is not a telling of the story of the Arab Spring. That is not my story to tell. That is for Egyptian writers to tell. It's a story about a British spy who is sent to infiltrate the actions of a British arms dealer. The reason he wants to do it is that he has personal history with this man following something that happened during the Arab Spring. The political and personal hit each other all the time.

The cast is particularly impressive, with Tom Hiddleston in the lead. Tell me about his character, Jonathan Pike.
Well he is the night manager, the existential hero. He has connections to the intelligence community and he picks up information but he's hiding from the world and his own emotions. It's a very strange role because he's a self-effacing character who listens a lot. Tom was very clear of that challenge and he delivers a very calibrated performance. He's haunted by the tragedy of what happened in Egypt and the opportunity for him to catch Richard Roper is somewhere between revenge and redemption. The question is whether he can hold on to who he is while pursuing this man. His soul is at stake.

Another change from the novel is that you introduced a female character…
In the book he's called Leonard Burr and now she's Angela Burr and is played by Olivia Colman. When I proposed this to le Carré, he was concerned, and it took a week or so to convince him. He adores her now but he's so passionate about that original character as the beating heart of the piece. She's an underdog who works in intelligence but is an outsider, sort of a descendent of George Smiley, but with more grit.

Other versions of The Night Manager have failed to make it to the screen in the past. Why has this version succeeded?
It didn't work as a film because Pine's character is a slow burn. He's not Bond he's not Jason Bourne. Rhythmically it doesn't work across 90 minutes, but we have six hours. It's not quite as big as reducing War & Peace but it's big. It's a story about globalization and the moral consequences of that. We wanted to honor that and you need time to do it.

The Night Manager starts on BBC One on Sunday, February 21 at 9PM

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