The Night Manager (BBC1)
That fruity, arrogant drawl, dripping with sadism and self–loathing, is electrifying. But the return of Richard Roper highlights just what The Night Manager has been missing.
Arms dealer Roper, played with a pulsating aura of evil by Hugh Laurie, reappeared at the climax of last week’s episode, after we last saw him in a Syrian morgue with what looked like a bullet–hole in his head.
Although Laurie has been granted Executive Producer status on the show, I feared his character might be confined to cameo appearances. But now he’s back, he’s dominating the story, his malign and intimidating presence palpable even when he is not on screen.
Mocking an old friend over his divorce, he purred, ‘If I had a heart, it would surely bleed.’
It takes exceptional charisma to deliver a line like that without sounding petty or embittered.
That is what has been absent so far from this sequel to the first series from 2016. We had a bonus, too, with the return of Olivia Colman as retired MI6 chief Angela Burr, who admitted she helped Roper fake his own death.
Arms dealer Roper (pictured), played with a pulsating aura of evil by Hugh Laurie, reappeared at the climax of last week’s episode of The Night Manager, after we last saw him in a Syrian morgue with what looked like a bullet–hole in his head
The show’s hero, maverick spy Jonathan Pine (played by actor Tom Hiddleston)
If she had refused, she insisted, in a fraught and foul–mouthed outburst of self–justification, he would have killed her and her child.
Everyone moves in terror of Roper. His illegitimate son, Teddy (Diego Calva), is a drugs smuggler and gang boss with serious political influence in Colombia, where Roper now lives in hiding.
But Teddy becomes a child around his father. He even hovers at the bedroom door, afraid to bring in Roper’s morning coffee, for fear of waking him.
I was struck by how writer David Farr revealed Roper’s animalistic survival instincts.
Asleep and with his back to Teddy, he nevertheless sensed the young man was watching him.
Then he paced the room, sniffing the air, still conscious of being observed… while the show’s hero, maverick spy Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), stood half a mile away with a pair of binoculars.
Biologist Dr Rupert Sheldrake argued a powerful case in the Daily Mail last year, providing copious evidence that humans possess a sixth sense to warn when we are being watched.
Many scientists are sceptical but it’s telling that, when we see the instinct at work in a drama, we don’t question it. This primitive intuition is what has kept Roper alive so long.
Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) and Teddy (Diego Calva), who Christopher Stevens describes as a ‘drugs smuggler and gang boss with serious political influence in Colombia, where Roper now lives in hiding’
(L-R) Camila Morrone, Hugh Laurie, Simon Corwell, Tom Hiddleston, Diego Calva, Stephen Garrett, David Farr and Victoria Brooks attend ‘The Night Manager’ season two UK premiere in December 2025
My own instincts struggle to believe in the gay frisson between Pine and Teddy. They danced together in a steamy pas de trois with gangster’s moll Roxana (Camila Morrone).
Later, they both hesitated to shoot at each other during a gun battle. I find it hard to believe in any real physical attraction between them, however convenient it is to the plot.
But that’s a detail. Now that Richard Roper’s back, all I want to know is: who will he destroy to save himself? And will he get away with it again?
