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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts, and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
I'm Professor Stephen Dyson.
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C
And I'm Professor Jeff Dudas.
- [01:09]
B
And we are two professors of political science who have just watched the first three episodes of season two of the Night Manager, and we're going to share and talk about our instant reactions, maybe break down some of the themes and ideas that we see in the show. We've both just watched these episodes once. They've just been released a decade since season one of the Night Manager was unexpected to me that they were going to bring it back, but they have. And what do you make of the first three episodes of season two?
- [01:36]
C
So I thought the first three episodes of season two were promising in a lot of ways. I think season two shares season one's dedication to the craft of acting and the craft of storytelling in ways that I think are really interesting and intriguing and joyful. I think in a certain way to watch. We've got another really strong group of actors, some of whom are continuing, like Tom Hiddleston, who in some ways, I think is actually portraying an even richer version version of Jonathan Pine here in season two than in season one. And I think there are a lot of parallels between season two and season one. And the one thing that's got me a little leery is the way that episode three ended in the reintroduction of Richard Roper. And so Roper's presence stops being this kind of ghost in the machine that is, in the first couple of episodes, clearly meant to be important for helping us to understand Pine's character development over the previous decade. And it becomes literal. Roper's presence does. And I'm a little leery of that storytelling convention, and I'm a little leery about where season two is going to go from here. And as we'll talk about, I am wondering whether this is the kind of storytelling twist or plot device that Lucari himself would have employed were he to return to this material. So that's kind of my initial temperature check. What about you? What'd you think of it?
- [03:07]
B
Okay, so I like it, but I think. And I think reactions to it are gonna. Are gonna turn on some of the things that you've just talked about. You know, there's gonna be a critique of the show, right, which is. It's sort of a retread of season one. You know, a lot of the structures of the characters are the kind of same. Like, a lot of the characters are sort of ghosts or have analogues in season one characters. And then you could say, well, why. Why do a season two? You know, the story was. Was complete. So you could have that critique, you know, and you could say things like, the sort of reappearance of the central villain from season one is sort of a bit hackish and a bit kind of, aha, the monster is not. Is not really dead. Or you can take another view. Which is. One of Le Carrier's great themes, was that neat resolutions don't really exist in the world. The neat resolution, the clean battle between good and evil, in which the villain, you know, is defeated and the hero triumphs and everyone lives happily ever after, is a fantasy. And it's. It was a fantasy in particular of spycraft and of the Bondian kind of. Kind of genre. And Lucario always saw things as just, you know, a lot more muddled, a lot more ambiguous, and crucially, never ending. Nothing ever ends, right? Conflicts are never really over. Things are never really resolved. And if individuals are kind of done away with, the universe will provide another individual to continue those things onwards. And as a literalization of those themes, I think having a season two is very true to those Le Carre themes, you know, and you could say season one ended in a way that was fairly sort of classic cathartic ending. Roper seems to get his due, and Pine kind of walks away. The novel didn't end that way it was a much more ambiguous ending. And so in a sort of meta sense, the very fact of having a season two makes the night manager as a televisual text truer to Lucaria's vision in the novel than season one, which is the literal adaptation of the novel was.
- [05:01]
C
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point, and I think that point leads me to the real strengths that I saw, particularly in the first episode. I do think that the first episode does a really good job of giving us this kind of really damaged and fractured character in Jonathan Pine. It portrays him in a certain way that I think is more persuasive than season one portrays him. It's much, much clearer to me in season two that this is a guy who has long term sort of post traumatic stress disorder, presumably from his time in the military in the Iraq war. And it helps you to understand why he is drawn habitually to these nocturnal lifestyles that we see him were first introduced to him as being a part of or is doing in season one. Well, in season two, he's doing essentially the same thing, right? Instead of the night manager, he's now like, well, he's literally the manager of the night owls. And what we learn is that he doesn't sleep. Right. And I think it's fair to remember back to season one, which I think we both watched in anticipation of season two, both rewatched, I should say, in anticipation of season two. And it's interesting to go back and say, okay, well, so clearly this was somebody who also was at the end of his rope, right, in season one when we first meet him, and he's barely kind of functional even then. And I thought the beginnings here of season two, particularly in that first episode, I think are really strong with regard to deepening his character development and giving us maybe a character who feels more reminiscent of the Le Carre version of the character than we actually got. Ironically, I suppose, in season one, which is based on, you know, very closely on the novel.
- [06:48]
B
Yeah, he was quite sort of jaunty and, you know, extremely charming and sort of upbeat. And in a sense, he's playing those roles to kind of insinuate himself with the. With the rope of family. But also he kind of had that affect about him and even Hiddleston as an actor, you know, he had that youthful glow when you watch the things back to back. And now he's a. He's a sort of more, I don't know, pockmarked or he's just a darker figure. He's a psychologically dark figure. He sort of inhabits the night, kind of literally and figuratively scares his psychologist, who finds him to be a very sort of dark figure. He screams at one point or exclaims, make me clean. You know, clean me up. And you can never quite tell to what degree these are kind of the expressions of his most innermost torment or to what degree he's kind of still a bit in control of himself and playing that role.
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C
It's a bit of both. Right. These manipulative moments at the same time that they're authentic expressions of insecurity and. And anxiety.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And the other thing that I thought was a really neat. A neat and clever device for storytelling in the first episode, which then kind of gets moves on very quickly, is Jonathan Pine. He's got this dog, Right. And dog's name is Corky.
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B
Wasn't it a cat? Is it a cat? I thought it was a cat.
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C
Okay, so it's a cat.
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B
Yeah.
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C
But the name is Corky. And Corky, of course, is the name of Richard Roper's, basically Major Culcoran.
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B
Yeah.
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C
His kind of conciliary in season one, who Pine murders.
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B
Right.
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C
And so there's this. Again, we're dealing with a character here who's got a lot of guilt and a lot of trauma that he doesn't process in any meaningfully functional way. And he seems to be habitually finding himself thrown back into these circumstances that share or that peak, on one hand, his sense of duty and peak, on the other hand, his sense of trauma and anxiety.
- [08:48]
B
Well, and they have a. What Pine had done to Corcoran was not only murder him, but he'd murdered him to replace him, to sort of assume not his literal identity, but his role in the Roper organization as the person who signs, who insulates Roper from kind of the paper trail, the public. Public figure. And the other thing that. That points up is, you know, a lot of Pine's trauma is tied into this double movement or this. This interconnection of kind of betrayal and eroticism. And the eroticism of betrayal because the. The major trauma that's driving him as we meet him in the. In the story is the Sophie Alekhan trauma, which is erotic for him. You know, he genuinely, you know, is. Is at first erotically attracted and then in. In love with her in. In short order, but he also sort of betrays her, right, in that she entrusts him with secrets and he thinks he is doing the right thing in passing them on, but he discovers, you know, as in all Le Carre type spy services, you know that these are all penetrated, leaky institutions. And this ends up getting Sophie killed. And that was going on throughout season one with Pine and Jed's relationship. And it re emerges in season two in a way that I think is really sort of interesting and true to the character and develops the character in what is turning into this sort of erotic triangle of betrayal between Pine and Teddy Dos Sandos and I'm sorry, I'm temporarily blocking Roxanna. That's it. And Roxanna Belanos, I guess. The Jed character.
- [10:18]
C
The Jed archetype character.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And that connection between eroticism and betrayal is really. That's Pine's unique thing, I think, or at the core of him.
- [10:30]
C
It's a great point. And as you say, it's also consistent with Le Carre in general. Because I'm thinking about. We both also watched Eric Morris's documentary, the Pigeon Tunnel. Yeah. And this is one of the big themes, Right. Of that. Of that movie is that Lucari is obsessed with betrayal.
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B
Yes.
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C
In all of its forms.
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B
Right.
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C
Emotional, literal, geopolitical. And we see that. So it makes a lot of sense to lean hard into that theme. Right. For this story, which is both consistent with Le Carre and the original story, but as we say, kind of consistent with his broader sense of what was at stake in these kinds. Kinds of behind the scenes spycraft world.
- [11:11]
B
Well, an international and political or national and international betrayal are ultimately personal betrayals. Right. They're accomplished through personal means and the tall of them are personal as well. And one thing I teach in political science is international relations. And we're constantly told that this is like a science. And so it's about these grand forces. And maybe it's grand forces of kind of national power or, you know, arms races or rationality. Or maybe you're told it's that kind of the pursuit of ideological. These grand sort of social forces that drive things.
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C
Structural.
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B
Yeah. And individuals kind of don't really matter, you know, and there are these dispersenal, impersonal, sorry, historical or rational forces that are driving things. And what Le Carrier always points out, and it's absolutely to the fore in the Night Manager, is that. No, these are. Most of that is sort of ephemera. It's not really driving things. Most of that is a lie. And all of these things are processed through actually personal motivations. So I'd. In his great sort of Cold War novels, the west and the east would proclaim these ideologies. What they really were, were A set of merit and sort of essentially morally equivalent bureaucratic organizations. The goal of the bureaucracies was to kind of exploit and chew up and use individuals. But the individuals who were engaging in betrayal would sort of get an erotic charge from it or a delicious charge from it. And why are people doing the things that they're doing? And I think this applies to Pine and to the other characters in the Night Manager. They're doing it. And it's something Lucario says in the Pigeon Tunnel because, you know, it's nice to think that you know something someone else doesn't know or that you've got one over on someone else, or there's a sort of erotic charge about that, or you're feeling guilty about something or you're working out some personal trauma. And it looks like it's geopolitics and it looks like it's good versus evil and all the rest of it. And these are titanic forces that are going on, but the titanic forces inside the heads and the hearts of pretty ordinary individuals. Yeah.
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C
And I think crucially as well, for Lucari, it seems to these are moments of betrayal that work themselves into the spy services themselves and up into the leadership. And here again, reflecting back on the Errol Morris documentary, there's a long time that's spent on Lar's kind of obsession with the Kim Philby character. Right. And the degree to which that betrayal at the highest levels of MI6, I think it was. Right. Sort of shapes Lucari's vision of the leadership dysfunction. Right. That happens even within the organizations whose express purpose is to defend and to protect the nation. And we see that all over the Nightmare Suit in season one, in which we've got, you know, the corruption between Richard Roper's organization and the highest levels of MI6. We see it again, at least the beginnings of it here in season two, in which there is. Appears to be some as yet completely, not yet completely clear set of corrupt relationships between the new head of the river of MI6.
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B
Yeah. The river House. Myra.
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C
Myra and Danito Santos.
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B
Right.
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C
Are actually Roper again.
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B
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I think's going on is there are all these kind of unending or intergenerational traumas that are going on. And I think that's. That's a key. So almost every character is carrying something that. That's. That's kind of driving them on. And quite often it's a. It's a parent and child thing that's going on. Of course, Teddy Dos Santos is Richard Roper's son. We're shown for emphasis. Pine goes to visit Richard Roper's son, you know, Danny from season one, who is obviously and perfectly understandably, you know, traumatized by the apparent death of his.
- [15:07]
C
Father, but also by the betrayal of Pine himself.
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B
Yeah. Who do become this surrogate sort of father figure. Roxana's kind of carrying something from her, from a father that seems to be driving her on. And then in a broader sense, you know, Teddy Dos Santos, who's presented as a, as an orphan, you know, whose father is mother is not in the picture at all that we see and whose father is presumed dead is, is himself, you know, recruiting kind of the orphans of Colombia to kind of amass an army to, it seems, reopen another kind of intergenerational trauma. The unfinished nature of the 2016 piece in Columbia. And it's a 10 year anniversary of that piece. And he's kind of, he's gonna kind of blow that up. And this, this intergenerational trauma, this trauma between and children, this nothing ever ends kind of suffuses the night. Manager Pine says at one point, you know, I feel like I'm chasing ghosts. He's, he's carrying all this trauma that's sort of within himself.
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C
Yeah, trauma and guilt. And this was something that leads me to revisit a topic that we mentioned off camera, which is just how British, how British is all of this, right. And the, the thing that comes to mind and sort of setting you up, right, to, to discourse on this, given your, your own heritage. A lot of this is this kind of British post colonial nostalgia. And that has worked out in real life, Right. I mean, when forward facing public British colonialism begins to fall into disrepute and then to get dislodged from the international stage. One of the characteristic responses of the British is to try to maintain their central role in world affairs or in, in the public eye by doing things like, you know, mounting expeditions to be the first to climb Mount Everest or mounting expeditions to arrive at the South Pole before anyone else, or mounting expeditions to be the first, you know, to, to pass through the Northwest Passage. Then eventually. Right. The theme seems to be that, like, there is this nostalgia for maintaining Britain's central role in world affairs, even if it's undercover, even if it's underground, literally and figuratively, even when it becomes fully illegitimate, like what's happening with the arms dealerships and the, and the arms kinds of dealing roles that are being taken place crucially and orchestrated by British authorities on one hand. And British citizens, on the other hand. And so I do wonder if, if part of what's happening here is that the intergenerational trauma works at the level of national identity as well in the.
- [17:49]
B
Night Manager as a story that's clearly going on, you know, and one of the things that motivates both Burr and Pine in the TV series and in the novel is specifically that Roper is British, you know, and he's kind of spreading. The empire is gone and so that capacity to kind of do violence and harm is gone. But in this, in the post Cold War kind of globalized, you know, multi polar world, those kind of harms are being done more by individuals and individual adventurers. And Roperism is a sort of individual adventure of a particular sort. And it motivates both Burr and Pine to stop him from doing that because they feel it is a specifically kind of British responsibility. I think Pine says something to that effect in season one and Burr in the novel talks about it a lot. And she's particularly annoyed by Roper because he has all these advantages that she is a working class person. Sorry, in the novel it's a he. In the TV series she is being given all these advantages by the, by the British society and British state and has gone off and this is what he's kind of done with it and it's just kind of not the done thing. And it's something that. A problem that has to be solved internally.
- [19:00]
C
Well, and I. And at least as season one has it, she's also particularly offended by Roper because he has seen the consequences with his own eyes of sort of British imperialism. And just as she has, they've seen the exact same thing. And it has motivated her in one way, it's motivated him in the most sinister and cynical possible of ways. And so it just continues this kind of inter identity, international identity rivalry as well. Right.
- [19:31]
B
Yeah. And he's the kind of broadest level, you know, Rope is such a sort of nihilist and such a. Such a huge cynic and is. Is so sort of concerned with, I mean, yes, personal profit, but. But also just kind of just wants to have a good time. He thinks the world is rotten, so he can kind of act in rotten ways. Not, not because he sees himself as kind of uniquely evil. It's just the whole. Everyone is a hypocrite who doesn't say that the world is. Is rotten and everyone's kind of buyable under the surface and so forth. And at some level, you know, Burr Pine, if you're not Going to oppose that.
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C
Right.
- [20:10]
B
Then what are we actually doing here? What's sort of going on here? And I think it is significant that, you know, the Night Manager as a concept is Le Carre's first post Cold War novel. And, you know, if you thought the Cold War was sort of this ideological shell game that was not really about much, and then the Cold War is gone. What is your next big historical question? And maybe that's what he was.
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C
Yeah.
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B
What he was thinking. It's. Is there anything going on other than just a denialism? And I think you can see in the pigeon tunnel, He. He never quite wanted to resign himself to that.
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C
Yeah.
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B
But I do think he fears that that might. Yeah. Might be what's really driving history and Is really going on. Yeah.
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C
And then. So let's. Let's spend a little bit of time talking about the Teddy dos Santos.
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B
Yes.
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C
Who is presented, at least in the first moments or the first blushes of this season as the main villain. We come to find that's probably not actually the case. So his real name is Eduardo. Right. He's the sort of quasi legitimate son of Richard Roper, but somebody who has almost no interaction with him. He sees him once a year or so. The influence seems to be minor for most of his childhood, but he goes by Teddy dos Santos. So that's one towel, as we were talking about. Off. Right.
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B
The.
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C
The shortening of it of Edward to Teddy is a, you know, an Anglo.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Convention. But the. The name, it. So the chosen name, Teddy Dos Santa. So. Right. Literally, it's Teddy Two Saints.
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B
Yes.
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C
Right. And so who are. And it's. It's, on one hand, I suspect, a reference to him being taken in by the church. Right. And growing up as an orphan. Right. Within the Catholic Church. But, like, who's the other saint? I mean, it seems like it's probably Roper. Right. So it's. You know, it strikes me that there's some meaning behind his chosen nom de guerre.
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B
One on each shoulder. Right. One stand on each shoulder. Yeah. He's a compelling character. And I do think it's his relationship with Pine and the kind of eroticism that's in that relationship is, I think, convincing. And he's really adding kind of. Kind of depth to what's going on there. Do you think he could stand on his own? Do you think we needed the father to actually re. Enter the picture? You're right. That naming thing is good because it's not only is Teddy an Anglicized kind of contraction of Edward Eduardo in this case. But Edward. But Teddy is to Edward as Dickie is to Richard. Like it's sort of an upper. It's an upper class shawning. It's a kind of jaundy. You know, if you're from the working class and you call Edward, you're probably not going by Teddy.
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C
Yeah.
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B
You know, you might go by Ted or Eddie or something like that.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Just as in, if you're Richard, you might be Rick, or you might be Richard, you're probably not Dicky unless you're. Unless you're actually quite well to do that.
- [22:59]
C
So that's really interesting. And it's. And it stands in contrast with the different names that Jonathan Pine takes on, which are never shortened as far as I can tell.
- [23:08]
B
No.
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C
Right. It's. It's Jonathan or it's Andrew or it's Thomas.
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B
Yes.
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C
All names that.
- [23:15]
B
They're all very solid Anglo Saxon names.
- [23:16]
C
All names that can be shortened and turned into these kinds of, as you say, these kind of jaunty upper class names. And none of them ever are.
- [23:23]
B
No, they're very solid Anglo Saxon names. They're not. They're very kind of le Carrier spycraftian in how they're chosen, in that there's nothing about them that you never go, ooh, like, that's an interesting name. You don't really remember it after it's gone. But it's also not so bland that you. You know, it's just perfectly chosen to create just the right level of interest and the right level of instant forgettability, which is useful for someone like Pine, who's having to cycle through these multiple identities. And I thought there was a lovely, very clever moment where Teddy gets Pine drunk. Gets him.
- [23:56]
C
Yes.
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B
Gets him high, and then gives him kind of a truth drug or something. And it doesn't work on Pine. He's still able to spin it. Spin his story.
- [24:04]
C
It half does. Right.
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B
Well, I don't know. I. He told him a totally. He told him the COVID story. He didn't tell him who he really is.
- [24:11]
C
Stuff like Wash me clean. Right.
- [24:12]
B
Well, sure, but. But this. This, again, is you. You embed the. You embed the lie in the truth. Right. The most convincing lie is the one that's. That. That's in truth. Which I think, for La Carrie, is all discourse. Not even when you're trying to do spycraft. Like everyone is embedding their truth within a lie.
- [24:27]
C
Yes.
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B
And there's really no difference between the two. But I did think it was a, you know, in a. In a. In a Show that's a lot about ongoing trauma, about things never ending, and about chasing ghosts and people always being haunted by things. There is a question of a man in Pine who's been through so many spin cycles of identities and traumas and all the rest of it. You know, he's like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. And then when you administer truth serum to a copy of a copy of a. What do you actually get? You know, you're just gonna get one of these now floating identities. And perhaps he doesn't quite remember he's real.
- [24:59]
C
This is my memory, my medic kind of identity circle. Right. That just keeps on going. And to throwback to the very beginning of season one, this is one of the things that Sophie says to him. Right. Immediately says, oh, now you're gone. Yes, now you're here. Now you're gone. There's somebody else here now.
- [25:14]
B
Yes.
- [25:14]
C
And so that's. I mean, that's a really interesting point that. So he's just cycling through different forms of identity. Does he even know at this point who he actually is?
- [25:22]
B
Yeah, yeah. She says that you're like a different person every time. And I'd to like. I'd like one of you to make love to me.
- [25:28]
C
Yeah.
- [25:28]
B
You know, so she kind of fully. And that's, I think, one reason why she so imprints herself on him in that she. She sort of instantly understands his nature and his truth.
- [25:37]
C
Yeah. And Roxanna does as well. I mean, the. The thing that seems to really scare her is his performance when he's totally strung out.
- [25:45]
B
How did you do that?
- [25:46]
C
How the fuck did you do that? I thought she says to him, and he doesn't really respond.
- [25:52]
B
Right.
- [25:52]
C
Presumably because it's instinctual at this point. But to your previous question, could Teddy Dos Santos stand on his own? Yeah, I think he probably could.
- [26:01]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I thought he was quite compelling. And I've seen some online stuff where people were saying, you know, it wasn't very memorable and rope had to turn up and all the rest. I kind of. I don't quite agree. I think it was. It was absolutely fine. And, you know, I think it'll be. It's going to be interesting to have Roper back. And I'm sure there's extra twists as to what's really going on. They've obviously got to explain how it is that Burr. Or why it is that she kind of agreed that he was dead when that was. That was not true.
- [26:26]
C
Was she Duped or.
- [26:27]
B
Yeah. Or is she. Is there some of the twist going on involving her? Last thing I thought we'd talk about is, you know, Le Carrie is often held up as the. As the anti Bond. And he started kind of writing this stuff because he was annoyed by the cleanliness and the glamour of the Bond character. So that's just not how it's like. I think there is a great irony here in the Jonathan Pine, for all the reasons we've been talking about, comes off very much as. I mean, he's not without quite the physicality in. I mean, in both kind of, you know, body shape, but. But also in the way he behaves. But in. In psychological demeanor and affect, he is very much like Daniel Craigsbond. And Lucario was the anti Bond in the Sean Connery, Roger Maher type of thing, you know, and Daniel Craigsbond was a. Was a psychologically damaged, brutal person. I'll never forget showing Students Casino Royale just a few years ago, and I still had this kind of memory of Bond as this. I was operating with this image of, you know, Daniel Craig as the glamorous Bond, and they were shocked. They just said he's a psychopath. And that's how he reads when you don't have those associations. And so ironically, kind of Le Carrie starts out as the Andy Bond. Bond comes to Le Carrine now reads as certainly the Daniel Craig era, including.
- [27:46]
C
As you've mentioned, the homoeroticism.
- [27:49]
B
The characters, which was a thing going, you know, the Teddy Dos Sandos reads me a little like Silver. The, you know, the villain in Skyfall is that there's an element of similarity going on there. Yeah.
- [28:00]
C
And the doubling. Right. And that's the other thing that's starting to happen is that the villains double with our putative hero. And we get that in Roper and in Pine, both of whom have. Have, you know, as far as the world knows, been dead over the exact same amount of. Of time.
- [28:15]
B
Right, okay, so those are our thoughts and reactions to the first three episodes of the Night Manager. We're going to do this weekly. You know, there's one episode coming out a week now. We would love to get your views. You know, this is just what we came up with and thought after one viewing. We would really love to have those ideas tested, challenged, added to, you know, what do you see in the. In the show? You happy that it's continued? How do you read the Pine character? Did Richard Roper really need to show up again? Any of the other things that we've talked about, please, you know, add some comments, and we'll be back next week. And on that bombshell.