Adapted on TV in 2016, almost a decade-and-ahalf after John le Carré’s eponymously named first post-Cold War novel, The Night Manager managed to be an immersive page-to-screen remake, buoyed in no small measure by a heavyweight cast comprising Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman and Elizabeth Debicki.
The espionage thriller, tracing the journey of a man wounded in soul and spirit from a hotel manager to a spy determined to bring down an international arms dealer for reasons both personal and not, found an audience strong enough for the makers to license it out to 180 countries.
Thirty years after le Carré wrote it, The Night Manager has finally made its way to India, its story of cross-border dynamics, political diplomacy being dictated by corrupt economic give-and-take and forces ready to bring the world to the edge of war being suitably altered and contextualised to give viewers a globe-trotting adventure dictated by what’s happening around us in the here and now.
Creator Sandeep Modi, who also co-directs the show with Priyanka Ghosh, teams up with Shridhar Raghavan to pen the adaptation. Raghavan, fresh from the praise and plaudits for Pathaan, alters a large part of the opening episode, setting it in Bangladesh and against the backdrop of the Rohingya refugee crisis, with the bloody protest spilling onto the streets of Dhaka. In the original, the Arab Spring formed the backdrop.
It’s in a swanky Dhaka hotel that Shaan Sengupta (Aditya Roy Kapur) works as a night manager whose life is irrevocably changed when a teenaged child bride living as a hotel guest snuggles out information of her mucholder husband being involved in an international arms deal with Shailendra “Shelly” Rungta (Anil Kapoor), otherwise known to the world as a philanthropic businessman.
Shaan hustles hard to save the girl, but his failure to do so haunts him day and night. A few years later, working in a hotel in Shimla, he encounters Rungta as a guest, setting off a whirlpool of emotions within him. He finally decides to infiltrate Rungta’s inner circle — with more than a little help from RAW agent Lipika Saikia Rao (Tillotama Shome) in what is largely an unauthorised operation. Shaan earns his place at Rungta’s table but the shrewd businessman strongly suspects that his new recruit is not who he claims to be.
Barring a few changes here and there depending on geography and demographic, the Indian adaptation remains more or less true to the beats of the original. The show allows Aditya Roy Kapur to play himself, which isn’t a bad thing for a character like this which requires the man to be stone-cold sometimes and also turn on the charm every now and then.
While Aditya is not really able to convey the hurt and feeling of responsibility that Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine made visible just by the twitch of an eyebrow, he pretty much gets the memo right, though one can’t help but think how Hrithik Roshan — originally chosen to play the role — would have made the character fly (pun intended).
That’s, however, taken care of by a scenery-chewing act from Anil Kapoor who, despite Rungta’s apparent ruthlessness and his reputation of being a ‘merchant of death’, still gives a feel of vulnerability in the scenes he shares with his young son.
In the four episodes of The Night Manager currently available on the platform, the action shifts from Dhaka to Shimla to Sri Lanka, with Benjamin Jasper’s camerawork creating magic. Equally gorgeous is Sobhita Dhulipala who takes on the Elizabeth Debicki character of the gangster’s moll, who we hope, given the kind of talent Sobhita has, has much more to do in Part Two than just flaunt her enviable swimsuit collection.
With Shaan’s entry into Rungta’s inner coterie, the power dynamics see a change, orchestrated in no small measure by Shaan and executed by Lipika, with Part Two promising to bring the fight to the table.
Part One is mostly made watchable by two key players, with the actors who play them lifting them off the paper. One is Tillotama Shoma who is determined to make Shaan her “Vibishan” to take down Rungta’s Lanka. The scene stealer is Saswata Chatterjee, who, in an inspired casting choice, brings to life Rungta’s openly gay righthand man. His Brij Pal aka BJ (we saw what you did there!) has a blast with his lines, treating the set like his party and playground. When referred to as a “chamcha” in a scene, BJ hardly raises a sweat saying, “I love spooning”.
With Part Two — which has clearly been shot already if the sneak peek at the end of Part One is anything to go by — only slated to arrive in June, it’s an inexplicable decision made by Disney+Hotstar, which we hope, for their sake, is backed by some thought and strategy. The long wait for the final few episodes may, conversely, drive viewers who haven’t caught the British original to hop over to Amazon Prime Video. Will they come back to Disney+Hotstar five months later? Well, let’s hope no one checks out. Right, Mr Night Manager?