f13.net

The Night Manager is six-part BBC serial drama and an adaptation of the John le Carre novel of the same name.  As you would expect of the the author, it's a spy thriller based around the workings of the intelligence community: an intel procedural if you would.

The cast is excellent: Tom Hiddlestone stars and is as charming as ever, and if he ends up as the next Bond then it's a early chance to judge him in the genre.  Hugh Laurie is occasionally stilted - as he tends to be when asked to play a straight (i.e. non-comedic) character - but at least he is getting to use his own accent.  Tom Hollander, Angela Colman, Elizabeth Debicki and others are strong supporting actors.

Reviews have been very positive thus far, and I've enjoyed it almost as much as my wife, who was lured in by the offer of Hiddlestone in the nip.

If you are in Britain, or if you can proxy there, you can see all four episodes so far televised at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03g13rt  If not then you can get it on usenet or whatever I won't judge you it's your life see if I care.  Just don't torrent it you dumbass.

It's going to be premiering on AMC in the US on April 19. I'm looking forward to it.

There are no huge spoilers here since it is seen in the first few minutes of episode one but heads-up to the military geeks: if you are easily offended by lazy research work then don't look too closely at the vast shopping-list of arms and munitions that forms the  for counter-insurgency use.

You look at it and think "hmm, yes, ok a main battle tank has its place, but I am not sure that the logistics will be made any easier by sticking yourself down for Leopards, Challengers, Leclercs and M1A1 Abrams.  And I am suspicious regarding the use you may have for all those Stinger launchers but who knows, the protestors may all hop into F-15s and... oh wait, youwant F-15s too!  Nice one!"  But that's fine.  However the row "Avro Vulcan" did stick out: I am suspicious that the one remaining (Hawker Siddeley, technically) Vulcan could easily be prised away from doing fast taxis on the busy 2012 airshow circuit where the team of dedicated amateurs who kept it running would surely spot that it was missing pretty rapidly.  Having it pop up dropping poorly-aimed sticks of unguided bombs on Tarir Square would allow some pretty easy traceability.

Oh and a Trident D5 missile.  Essential escalation from teargas for today's well-prepared authoritarian despot.

The real order would be:

"HMGs: however many you have in stock and lots of ammo
Cattle prods: absolute shitloads.  Do you do bulk discounts?"

FYI, this is now free on Amazon prime. Any John le Carre fan should watch this with religious fervor.

It's not just lazy research on weapons, there is also a lot of the lazy cynicism you find thoughout all le Carre's books - which undermines the script's pretension to achingly self-important right-on worthiness.

But all that only makes it a more faithful adaptation of a le Carre book.

That lazy cynicism is par for the course in a lot of northern Europe or at least was when I was growing up. The facile classification of all US actions as, either jingoistic, self-interested or, more often than not,  brutish and stupid is quite common in his novels. Unfortunately, American foreign policy is quite often so short sighted that I needn't even mention real incidents to assert that le Carre isn't exactly pulling this shit out of his ass.

There's the occasional sympathetic American renegade/true patriot (tm) so as to not entirely alienate the American audience (we have more money and there's more of us after all).

The length of the series is pretty much perfect for the story (which is based on a novel) giving things time to develop without the bloat of a full-sized tv-series (or the need to cut too much as a movie would have needed to).