Episode 6 spoilers ahead
You’ve got to love Richard Roper, the evil, murderous, skin-shedding snake. In the end he was two steps ahead of everyone, including Jonathan Pine, including me, and he single-handedly made The Night Manager finale (BBC1) a seat-gripper. What a character. He delivered an 11th-hour plot twist that was far better than I would have expected three weeks ago when this series was becoming, frankly, boring.
“Nothing is so precious that it can’t be sacrificed,” he said and, fair play, he meant it, shooting his own son, Teddy, in the face with as much emotion as if he’d brushed a biscuit crumb off his slacks.
It was obviously implausible that Roper (Hugh Laurie, busily acting them all off the screen) would so quickly have been able to outfox the operation and arrange to drop the electromagnetic pulse weapon into Colombian rebel soldiers’ hands while sending Sally that melodramatic plane drop of a single red rose. But at least TNM didn’t deliver a clichéd, pat ending in which the good guys won and we had to watch Pine (Tom Hiddleston) changing into another slim-fit shirt while saying: “It was nothing. Just doing my job.”
Instead, evil triumphed, which was strangely satisfying because TV story arcs usually bend the other way. Pine was outsmarted and Angela Burr got a bullet through the heart, presumably courtesy of Mayra (sad, but at least it puts Olivia Colman’s northern accent out of its misery). Meanwhile, Roper won the jackpot, getting back his teenage son Danny, his Oxfordshire mansion and to top it all, he’s about to get some new dogs.
Were we supposed to think that the badly injured, bleeding Pine had collapsed and died at the end, as an eagle soared overhead? I don’t believe it for a second. Surely what we have there was a tee-up for series three, Pine recovering and returning to haunt Roper on his padel court.
It did tiptoe into the hilarious, expecting us to believe that not only was Roper semi-smitten with Pine (“I miss that smile,” he told him), but that Teddy was positively besotted. A father and son throuple! Is there no one Pine can’t seduce, even though he’s as erotic as an ironing board?
Tom Hiddlestone as Jonathan Pine, “as erotic as an ironing board”
BBC/INK FACTORY/DES WILLIE
Spare a thought for poor Martin, the loyal private investigator who arrived in the nick of time to rescue Pine and seems to have got a few bullets for his trouble. I feel Martin was much underappreciated.
Anyway it looked as if Roxana, who turned traitor on Pine to save her life, was heading back to Miami, having helped Roper see the light that Teddy was sweet on his nemesis. So he didn’t chop her up and post her in shoeboxes after all.
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“You demand love by tyranny, Richard. It will only get you so far,” Pine had told him. Ooh, that’s told him, Jonathan! I doubt that’s the sort of thing you’d say in the jungle when you’re about to be executed. Roper had explained that he is not bound by normal feelings. Thanks to the changing circumstances of his childhood (sometimes his parents couldn’t even afford champagne!) he has become adept at shedding his skin like a serpent and moving on. Now he’s done it again, resurfacing in the home counties in a natty green jacket.
It was a fine bit of misdirection ten minutes before the end, with the tables turning, even if it was very far-fetched. Roper has slithered from his scales and proved he remains a great, charismatic villain.
★★★★☆
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