'The Night Manager' Resurrects for A Double Season Order at BBC & Amazon
I'm not here to upset anybody, but I'd like to point out that it's been almost a decade since the original six-part limited series The Night Manager originally aired on BBC One in February 2016. Based on the John Le Carre novel of the same name, the critically acclaimed show starred Tom Hiddleston, then at the height of his first round of Marvel fame, as former British soldier turned hotel night manager named Jonathan Pine recruited by MI6's Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) to help bring down powerful international arms dealer Richard Roper, played by the secretly British star of House, Hugh Laurie. The series co-starred Tom Hollander as Roper's right-hand man and Elizabeth Debicki as his femme fatale girlfriend, making it a star-studded cast. AMC Networks, which has recently acquired BBC America, got their hands on it and brought the series to the U.S. to great acclaim, and whispers of a second series followed to the point Deadline claimed filming would begin in 2022.
Two years later, those rumors are finally worth something, as the BBC and Amazon Prime Video have teamed up and announced that a second series will indeed start filming... as will a third! in 2024, not 2022, but who's counting, really? The least surprising part of the announcement is that the BBC is not teaming up with AMC Networks or the poor channel that still bears the British Broadcasting moniker for some reason. The last eight years of streaming wars have been hard on AMC's little band of niche streamers, as we've noted before, with only Acorn TV managing to float above the rest of the pack. (It speaks volumes that this announcement comes only days after AMC announced its foray in the U.K. would not be as a standalone streamer as originally planned but as content fodder for ITVX.... the same ITVX that could "parted ways" with its head of streaming boss Rufus Radcliffe less than 24 hours ago.)
Instead, Prime Video, which really doesn't get many more eyeballs but at least can claim people subscribe to it, even if as the dollar theater off the flea market next door, will be helping the BBC foot the bill. (Hey, when your studio is mostly a loss leader acting as an add-on for people to entice them to buy toilet paper without leaving the house, you can afford it.) The question, of course, is who exactly is slated to return, and exactly what plans are in the works for a plot for not just a Season 2 but a Season 3 as well.
