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Remember Jonathan Pine? Even Jonathan Pine is hazy on the details.
Played by Tom Hiddleston, John le Carré’s hotel manager-turned-spy is back for a second season – a full 10 years after the smash-hit first run of The Night Manager saw him infiltrate the life of cynical, avuncular arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) and shepherd him towards a violent kind of justice. Season 1 was glamorous, murky, exotic, violent and sexy. Season 2 is more of the same, with another array of exotic settings to backdrop its shadowy story.
‘This season stands alone as a piece of television,’ producer Matthew Patnick tells , promising bar-raising new locations. ‘It’s the same visual excitement – and then some – but we go somewhere very different with it.’
Unlike the first run, season 2 does not come direct from the pages of le Carré, who died in 2020, but screenwriter David Farr is channelling more of the great spy writer’s chilly psychological explorations into another globe-trotting spy thriller.
What is The Night Manager season 2 about?
All the Roper subterfuge has taken its toll on our suave hero. The new season finds Jonathan Pine’s real identity consigned to the bin of burnt aliases and the troubled spook operating under the name Alex Goodwin. He’s living a quiet life, heading up an MI6 surveillance team called the Night Owls, but he remains haunted by the fate of Roper and his own sense of moral compromise.
But the appearance of an old Roper associate and a trail of clues left by old MI5 warhorse and patron Rex Mayhew (Douglas Hodge) soon has him on the case of an arms trafficking Colombian called Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva). This time, he’s posing as a boozy expat financier called Matthew Ellis as he heads to Medellin to track down the gun runner. Glamorous entrepreneur Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone) offers the key to an off-the-books operation that may break open an arms-dealing ring or may lead Pine and co into deeper waters. Hayley Squires’ trusty MI6 field agent Sally is there to make sure he doesn’t drown.
Who stars in season 2?
Loki, Archipelago and The Life of Chuck star Tom Hiddleston is back as Pine, with Olivia Colman returning (briefly) as his British intelligence handler Angela Burr, and Hoard’s Hayley Squires as field agent Sally.
Babylon’s breakout star Diego Calva is the charismatic, ruthless Teddy Dos Santos and Daisy Jones & the Six’s Emmy-nominated star Camila Morrone is his business associate Roxana Bolaños. Other new additions to the cast include Indira Varma as a shady intelligence chief and Paul Chahidi as Pine’s ally Basil.
Where was The Night Manager season 2 filmed?
Season 1 took us across Europe and the Mediterranean, with Switzerland, Morocco and Tenerife all on the call sheet. The new season, which filmed between June and December of 2024, adds more stamps to its passport. Colombia was a key location, while Spain and Wales both lend their contrasting shorelines to the spectacular scenery. London, though, is where to begin.
The UK
The Night Owls’ HQ is a Holland Park mews… and Barcelona
Season 2 finds Pine heading up a small surveillance team known as the Night Owls – think the Slow Horses but with slightly better hygiene. The exterior of the HQ is a Holland Park mews house that connected to an interior in Barcelona. ‘Tom goes through that door in London and three months later he’s inside,’ laughs Patnick of the editing magic.
Pine’s apartment is on the South Bank
Pine’s flat, blessed with views across the Thames, was filmed on the South Bank. ‘We looked at numerous locations on the river,’ says Patnick. ‘You don’t want to hide from the fact that you’re showing London.’
The tube journey was filmed at Aldwych Station
Episode 1 has Sally taking a tube journey across London. ‘Filming on the tube isn’t straightforward, but it gives the show realism,’ says Patnick. The sequence was filmed in the now defunct Aldwych station, which also appeared in Atonement and 28 Weeks Later.
Pine meets Roxana for the first time in Wild Notting Hill
A key contact for Pine/Goodwin’s investigations into an arms shipment is businesswoman Roxana and the pair cross paths for the first time in this Mediterranean-inspired west London restaurant.
Danny Roper’s school is Wellington College, Berkshire
Season 2 reconnects with the Roper storyline in surprising ways. Richard Roper’s son Danny, played by Hamnet’s Noah Jupe, is now at school in England. Wellington College was used for Pine’s tense meeting with Danny.
Pine reunites with Sally in Three Cliffs Bay, Wales
A chastened Pine meets up with Sally and one of his few British intelligence allies Basil in a cottage adjacent to this stark beach on the Gower Peninsula. ‘Originally, the house was going to be in France,’ says Patnick, ‘but somebody mentioned that location and it was the most obvious choice. It was as cold and wet and windy as it appears!’
Sally’s surveillance op was shot in Richmond-upon-Thames
The Night Owls’ surveillance op, which sets the plot in train, takes in a couple of contrasting London hotels – Hilton Park Lane and Paddington budget hotel the Fairways Hotel – and a riverside rendezvous filmed in Richmond.
The funeral was filmed at Brompton Cemetery
A key season 1 character meets their end early in the new series. The send-off was filmed at this famous old west London cemetery.
Colombia
Colombia had been the first choice location for season 2 but the high-altitude capital Bogota didn’t quite fit the bill. ‘If you’re up high looking down onto the city, it looks spectacular. But at ground level it didn’t offer the visual excitement that the show required,’ says Patnick.
The producer then scouted Panama, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, before heading back to Colombia and finally settling on its second-largest city. ‘I ended up in Medellin and suddenly in front of me was The Night Manager,’ he says. ‘It was opulent and visually exciting, it had contrasting areas, it was cinematic, it had scale. And the Colombia Film Commission were so helpful and supportive.’
Teddy Do Santos’s spectacular villa is in the Medellin hills
‘When I found this location, I had a tingle down my spine,’ remembers Patnick of the modernist villa where Teddy and Pine – sorry, ‘Ellis’ – have an eventful gathering in episode 2. ‘It’s got the scale, it’s unique and the owner bought into what we’re trying to do, which is really important. It’s a 20-minute drive up above Medellin. It’s spectacular.’
Pine follows the arms shipment to Cartagena
The Caribbean port of Cartagena plays a key role in later episodes. ‘There was a pressure not to [film] there because of time and money, but I did everything I could to make sure that we did,’ says Patnick.
The production found a dual use for the city’s Casa Pestagua boutique hotel: both filming and putting up the crew there. ‘We ended up buying out the hotel for two and a half days,’ says Patnick. ‘The show is going to change it forever, like the Es Saadi Palace in Marrakech in season 1 which is still associated with The Night Manager 10 years later.’
Spain
Tenerife stands in for Syria
Season 2 begins in season 1’s timeline, with the younger Pine and his MI6 controller Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) uncovering Roper’s grisly fate. The sun-bleached Syrian setting was filmed in Tenerife, a popular filming location that recently doubled for southern Spain in ITV heist caper Frauds.
The Medellin Gun Club was filmed at Hotel La Gavina on the Costa Brava
‘We used this as the gun club, for the tennis court [where Pine meets Teddy Dos Santos], a restaurant and as hotels,’ says Patnick of this 76-room hotel. ‘The actual tennis club is in Medellin but the actual interior is here. We had rehearsals the day before filming and Tom just kept wanting to carry on playing. He really struggled to hit a bad shot.’
The hotel abduction was shot at Torre Melina Gran Meliá in Barcelona
‘We struggled [to find] this hotel,’ says Patnick of the setting for a dramatic sequence early in season 2. ‘It’s actually an apartment block about 75 minutes from Barcelona and we put the [hotel] sign up. The downstairs and the lift is one location, and upstairs is somewhere completely different.’
When can I watch The Night Manager season 2?
The Night Manager series 2 begins on BBC One and iPlayer at 9pm Thursday, January 1 in the UK. The series will be available on Amazon Prime Video worldwide from January 11. Watch the trailer below.
