The Night Manager - a class act

While it could be expected that us British ex-pats are currently consumed by the Brexit discussion, the reality, over the last month, has been somewhat different. 

Those of us living away from our island home have been experiencing considerable frustration at not being able to see why the UK whipped itself into a frenzy - and played out via the press and social media channels - over The Night Manager, the BBC's lavish adapation of John Le Carré's novel about ex-British Army soldier Jonathan Pine and his mission to bring down nefarious international arms dealer, Richard Onslow Roper. But with thanks to Amazon for their swift dispatch of the Blu-ray package of the six-part series, I have allowed myself to catch up in a single evening's binge viewing. And, man alive, it didn't take long to see what the fuss was about.

Now, before I go further, the United States won't get to see The Night Manager for another couple of weeks, so I'll avoid giving any spoilers away. But I will say that this was contemporary spy drama at its very, very best. James Bond and Jason Bourne have, to some degree, shaped our expectations of post-9/11 espionage on screen, and this updated version of Le Carré's book places Pine and Roper in the very recent context of a Middle East consumed by uprising and the horrors of Syria and Iraq we now know so much about. 

Thanks, however, to brilliantly weighted acting and the razor-sharp steerage of Danish director Susanne Bier, the BBC's adapation gets the balance absolutely right, offering a sort of Bond-for-TV while still capturing what Le Carré does so well in his novels - the minute details of espionage and his characters and their intense, complex and subtly evolving relationships. In many respects Le Carré's stories resemble theatre productions, drawing on a core cast of principle characters and the interplay between them, with just enough settings to give the narrative some breathing room. The other way of looking at them is their relative lack of sensationalism - the antipathy of Bond, of course, and from a dramatisation point of view, closer in spirit to Len Deighton's Harry Palmer, who eschewed the Brioni suits and Aston-Martins of 007, for a drab trenchcoat and London Transport buses.

The BBC production does, though, tread gently in the realm of latterday cinematic Bond: the cinematography is stunning, the locations - Roper's Majorcan estate in particular - exquisite, and the build-up of suspense is such that you'd have to have ice flowing through your veins not to want to watch all six parts in one go, given the opportunity.

There is so much to enjoy about The Night Manager, but its biggest virtue is the casting: Tom Hiddlestone as Pine, Hugh Laurie as Roper, the ubiquitous Tom Hollander as Roper's waspish sidekick Lance 'Corky' Corkoran, Olivia Coleman as the George Smiley of the piece, civil servant Angela Burr and her obsession with snaring Roper, along with the catwalk elegance of Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, David Harewood (last seen being blown up in Homeland), Douglas Hodge and Neil Morrissey (yes, the onetime man behaving badly).

Again, without giving anything away, but Hiddlestone, Laurie, Coleman and Hollander in particular are outstanding. And, perhaps without this being the intention, the reason for their magentism is their portrayal of social standing. Yes, sorry to bring up the c-word. Everyone knows how obsessed we Brits are with class, but it has become unavoidable, especially in the last couple of days, with a Tory government led by an Eton and Oxford-educated stockbroker's son and a clique of school, university and country chums around him, all coupled to the strongly-held belief that Britain's wealthy elite (which represent not much more than 6% of the total population) are in the vast majority of positions of power and influence.

In The Night Manager 'Dicky' Roper is the son of an auctioneer who has built a comfortable and clearly oppulent life for himself selling assault rifles, anti-aircraft missiles and sarin gas to anyone prepared to buy them, and without any moral regard for whom or where the buyers use them on. 

Laurie's Roper is unashamedly posh, something which, with the exception of a certain American doctor, he has built his acting career around, particularly with comic toffs like Blackadder's Prince George/Captain George and Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry's Jeeves. Here, though, Laurie plays the villain, and one with borderline mysognistic tendencies and a close-knit clique of associates, the origin of which is not explained but could be from either military service or an establishment like Eton (which Laurie also attended, as did Hiddlestone and fellow thesps like Damian Lewis, Eddie Redmayne and Dominic West). 

This inner circle behave as one would expect those who were members of the Bullingdon Club to behave: a group of upper-crust rugger-buggers in expensive suede loafers who see the nature of their business as simply that, business. To add to it, there are the nasties of MI6, including the cynical, sneering Geoffrey Dromgoole, played by Tobias Menzes, who plays Whitehall mandarins and powerbroker with consumate ease (see Skyfall and The Thick Of It).

Little is known, or is meant to be known, however, about Hiddlestone's Pine. But given the context of his service in Iraq and his officer's deportment (contrasted by Roper's Scottish ex-SAS grunt bodyguard Frisky), he adds to The Night Manager's unspoken class narrative. Pine may have chosen to leave the army for the relative anonymity of manning a hotel's night desk, but Hiddlestone plays him as well-bred but enigmatically damaged, in sharp contrast to Roper's cockiness and illicitly acquired wealth. To puncture all this toffery, Coleman as Angela Burr (a change from the book, whose equivalent character was male) is a pregnant, loveless but professionally focused housewife with a strong Northern accent, working in the prosaic confines of a drab London office, a classic Le Carré motif to demonstrate that spycraft isn't all about vodka martinis. The class divide couldn't be more pronounced.

Authentic, real-world espionage in the era of jihadism may have nothing to do with chaps quaffing vintage cognac in gentlemen's clubs and addressing each other as "old boy", but I've got to admit that all of the rich, received-English accents in The Night Manager (alongwith the integral theatre of the British establishment) make it all the more better.

And for American audiences who will see the series later this month, Laurie and Hollander will add themselves to that volumous tradition of English actors who do villainy so well. Because let's face it, if you want a baddie, pick a Brit. Peter Cushing in Star Wars, Ian McKellen in The X-Men, Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons in their respective Die Hards, Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector, even George Sanders voicing the ruthless tiger Shere Khan in Disney's original Jungle Book, the list is endless. Better still, pick a caddish, posh Brit.

Of course, screen villainy isn't just for those with a cut glass accent: in theory, Roper could have been recharacterised as a Marbella-dwelling East End bad'n. Tony Soprano was clearly in this social bracket as the son of a Newark mafiosi who continued the family business with all the traditions of working class southern Italian crime that went with it (including a crew dressed mainly in tracksuits and gold jewellery). But whereas Soprano was actually the protagonist of The Sopranos, in The Night Manager, Roper's poshness amplifies his villainy, with Laurie adding a plummy, sinister sheen to the part aided by the rich timbre of his voice. 

Yes, it is about breeding and, yes, it is about class. And, yes, it comes over as being all the more authentic, especially in these times when priviledge is both visible and, it would appear, it really is not about what you know, than whom.