The Night Manager, Season 2 is a comfortably paced, tension holding series, with a couple of solid twists, observes Deepa Gahlot.
Only in a British series could two adversaries sit across a table and have a civilised meal, making threats in posh accents, when they could simply pull out guns and shoot each other.
Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston), the titular hero of The Night Manager, returns after a decade for a sequel, looking trim; age has added furrows to his brow and sharpened the jawline.
The first series (2016), based on -- though not slavishly faithful to -- John le Carré's book, was a huge success. The author, a master of the spy genre, then alive, had given it his approval.
After a show that good, what could be done for a season two, without the expertise and star value of the best-selling author?
It would creatively paralyse the best of them, but David Farr dared to create a sequel.
Not a standalone Pine plot, but a continuation of the first season.
How can that be done when the chief antagonist, Richard Roper (a charismatic Hugh Laurie) was despatched to certain death in Syria?
And how can the 10-year gap work in its favour? (It would be fresher in the minds of Indian audiences, due to the Hindi remake.)
The new season, directed by Georgi Banks-Davies, steps away from le Carré's source material, but has to contend with a fabulous spy thriller Slow Horses (by Mick Herron) that was released in the interim.
The series resembles Slow Horses in the beginning -- Pine, now with a different name and identity, leads a surveillance team called Night Owls. Their brief is to watch and record, but for how long can a man who has tasted blood in the jungle of espionage, stay away from the field?
The past catches up with him, and he hurls himself into the abyss of international conspiracy, corruption, treachery and subterfuge.
This time, instead of the unapologetically evil Roper, he comes up against Columbian crime boss, Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), who is called 'Roper's true disciple'.
The action shifts from the Middle East to South America, where the younger, smoother, volatile, yet surprisingly vulnerable looking Teddy is into what another cohort calls 'commercialisation of chaos' in politically unstable Columbia.
Pine, now under the alias of rogue Hong Kong banker Matthew Ellis, looking to launder his money, befriends Teddy and his ladyfriend Roxana (Camila Morrone), who is more in the traditional moll mode than the first season's Jed (Elizabeth Debicki).
The chemistry between Pine and Roxana has enough sizzle, but what steams up the dance floor is the steamy Pine-Teddy dance.
Olivia Colman's Angela Burr, who was responsible for recruiting and grooming Pine, is sidelined for the sleek, sharp, Indira Varma as Myra Cavendish, the new head of M16. The woman who leaves an impact, however, is the loyal, business-like Sally (Hayley Squires) as Pine's supportive team member.
Considering the current situation in Venezuela, Season 2 is awfully timely in its exploration of how Western profiteering can wreck an entire nation.
Though Hiddleston fills a suit stylishly, finds a well-fitting shirt even in the wilderness and rarely has a hair out of place, The Night Manager Season 2 does not have Bond-style glamour or Mission Impossible-like frantic action.
It is a comfortably paced, tension holding series, with a couple of solid twists.
It's enjoyable if not wildly entertaining.
But now that they have a hang of how Carré can be refurbished, and there is wickedness afoot somewhere in the world, Jonathan Pine will never be short of an assignment.
The Night Manager 2 streams on Amazon Prime Video.
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