“The Night Manager”: 20 amazing facts about the TV series! (List)

1. The Night Manager is a British-American television serial directed by Susanne Bier and starring Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman, David Harewood, Tom Hollander and Elizabeth Debicki.

2. It is based on the 1993 novel of the same name by John le Carré and has been updated to the present day.

3. The six-part serial began broadcasting on BBC One on 21 February 2016. In the United States,

4. It will begin on 19 April 2016 on AMC.

5. The plot: Former British soldier Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) is recruited by Angela Burr (Olivia Colman), an intelligence operative. He is tasked to navigate Whitehall and Washington, D.C. where there is an alliance between the intelligence community and the secret arms trade. He must infiltrate the inner circle of arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper (Hugh Laurie), Roper’s girlfriend Jed (Elizabeth Debicki), and associate Corkoran (Tom Hollander).

6. In January 2015 it was announced that the serial would be co-produced by the BBC, AMC and The Ink Factory.

7. Filming began in spring 2015 in London.

8. Episode 1 of The Night Manager was broadcast on 21 February 2016 on BBC One in the United Kingdom.

9. TV3 in New Zealand broadcast the first episode on the 28th February 2016.

10. In the United States, the show will premiere on 19 April 2016 on AMC.

11. The series will air in Australia on BBC First in 2016.

12. Adam Sisman, le Carré’s biographer, wrote in UK daily newspaper The Daily Telegraph, “It is more than 20 years since the novel was published, and in that time two film companies have tried and failed to adapt it, concluding that it was impossible to compress into two hours. But this six-hour television adaptation is long enough to give the novel its due.” He added, “And though Hugh Laurie may seem a surprising choice to play ‘the worst man in the world’, he dominates the screen as a horribly convincing villain. Alert viewers may spot a familiar face in the background of one scene, in a restaurant: John le Carré himself makes a cameo, as he did in the films of A Most Wanted Man and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. But he is on screen only for an instant: blink and you’ll miss him.”

13. Olivia Colman’s characters pregnancy was written into the script, when she disclosed the fact that she was pregnant in real life at her first meeting with the director. This was only weeks before shooting was due to begin.

14. 3 of the male cast (Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston and Tom Hollander) all went to the same prep school in Oxford, England called The Dragon and each ended up graduating at Cambridge or Oxford University and now are together in this series.

15. The lead character Burr (Olivia Colman) was written as a male in the original novel.

16. At one stage, this was going to be a major theatrical release with Dustin Hoffman starring and Sydney Pollack directing.

17. Tom Hollander and Olivia Coleman who appear played husband and wife in “Rev”

18. Hugh Laurie and Tom Hollander both attended Selwyn College, University of Cambridge.

19. Both Alistair Petrie and Jonathan Aris appeared in the tv series Sherlock (2010).

20. Reviewing Episode 1 for The Guardian, Archie Bland began by noting, “The Night Manager is as sexed up as television drama comes. In Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie it has bona fide international stars; in John Le Carre’s source novel it has a pedigree of untouchable grandeur. The palette is as sumptuous as one of our hero Jonathan Pine’s beautiful hotels.” He added, “It’s Laurie’s vulpine performance that gives The Night Manager its force once the smell of money has worn off. But we barely see him for the first 40 minutes – a delayed gratification trick that’s always worked like magic on me, ever since we spent the whole first episode of The West Wing waiting impatiently to meet Josiah Bartlet.” Turning to Hiddleston’s performance, Bland wrote, “And as the embodiment of the show’s atmosphere of paralysed establishment glamour, Hiddleston is the business. When the noble beast beneath that accommodating English exterior begins to make itself known, I do find the righteous revenge he’s intent on wreaking on Roper compelling.”