The Night Manager: A faithful remake with desi details and old loopholes

Other noticeable changes are made while building the character of Lipika Saikia Rao (Tillotama Shome) as a RAW official — a role essayed by Olivia Colman in the BBC production. The Indian makers have added more details to the character and even give us a peek into her personal life. For those familiar with Shome’s oeuvre, it is no surprise that she owns the role of an intelligence operative determined to bring down Shelly Rungta (Anil Kapoor), a shipping tycoon using philanthropy as cover for the international arms trade. Some of the best lines in the series belong to her and Brij (Saswata Chatterjee), the chief of Shelly’s staff.

Like several other recent web series, The Night Manager scores with its remarkable casting. Kapoor plays the role of a businessman with a young and attractive girlfriend, Kaveri (Sobhita Dhulipala), with ease and manages to understate the power he wields. Roy Kapur captures the soul of a former soldier with secrets from his past. He seems as comfortable as a hotelier in nifty suits with a polite demeanor as he is while buying fish in a local market of Sri Lanka.

The ensemble cast features several seasoned actors including, Bagavathi Perumal, Joy Sengupta, Jagdish Rajpurohit, Vikram Kapadia, Ravi Behl and Rukhsar Rehman. It will be interesting to watch their characters shape up in the remaining episodes as Shaan and Shelly have a face-off. For now, Disney+Hotstar is streaming four episodes of the show, directed by Modi and Priyanka Ghosh. The remaining four episodes will be released in June. The gap perhaps is not a great idea since this falls short of being an edge-of-seat thriller.

Though the series is expected to pack more suspense and thrill, it banks on mushiness too. Seemingly aware of the crisis the world is going through, it touches upon the Rohingya refugee issue and child marriage. Like in many famous spy thrillers, the antagonist has a stunning female companion that sets the stage for emotional conflicts and double-crosses. It also talks about gender bias in top-level government jobs. The scene in which Lipika, demoted to handle the archive after one of her missions goes wrong, captures it the best.

In spite of plugging some loopholes in the Indian version, some implausibilities persist in the plot. But, distracted by expansive landscapes, aerial shots, gorgeous locations, and the uber-cool lifestyle of Rungta, one is likely to overlook them. After all, spy thrillers are meant to be escapist dramas.