the-night-manager-fans:

The Night Manager season 2: What’s the status on this MIA show?

In this edition of our month-long MIA Shows article series, we’re putting the focus on one in The Night Manager that
has certainly been in the ether for some time. The first season aired
all the way back in February 2016 and yet, there’s still no definite
word on if the Tom Hiddleston spy drama is coming back for more.

It
was a really long time ago that it was first reported that BBC and
co-producer AMC were considering the idea of bringing the series back.
Yet, that’s no easy task given that the John le Carre adaptation had a
pretty open-and-shut season 1. There’s no definite need to bring the
series back and yet nonetheless, it may be something that is still
considered.

Earlier this year, though, there was a rather-frank response given by Simon Cornwell, son of le Carre, in a new interview with Television magazine:

“Actually,
not being cute, I really don’t know … We don’t have scripts for it yet,
and we would only think about making a second series of The Night
Manager if it was going to be really good. And I’m sure that Hugh
[Laurie] and Tom [Hiddleston] and Olivia [Colman], who are not exactly
underemployed actors, won’t want to come back unless it’s excellent,
frankly. And, you know, we have all of le Carré’s body of work to pick
from.”

Basically,
this means that there’s probably not going to be any in the near future
— especially given that Hiddleston has signed on to do an upcoming Thor [sic] limited series for the Disney+ streaming service. Meanwhile, Colman is playing Queen Elizabeth on The Crown through
season 4. Unless you make some enormous change with the cast, which
feels unlikely, it may be 2020 until people are even available to do it.
At that point, will there even be enough people who remember season 1
of The Night Manager for it to really even matter? We’re not
altogether sure that there will be. Of course, this is assuming that
some of these actors don’t end up getting booked for a number of other
things along the way.

So, for now, we’d say to throw this
particular show in the unlikely-to-come-back pile. Sometimes, it’s fine
for a limited series to be strictly that. Not every single show in the
known world needs to be come back and produced for many more seasons.
This was a great season in the time in which it was around but now, it
may be time for everyone to move forward and simply take on whatever is
coming next.

Of course, now that we’ve spelled all of that out, we’ll definitely have more on The Night Manager season 2 the moment that there are some further updates.

(Photo: BBC.)