CAST: Aditya Roy Kapur, Anil Kapoor, Shobita Dhulipala, Tilotama Shome, Saswata Chatterjee
DIRECTOR: Priyanka Ghose, Sandeep Modi, Rukh Nabeel
The English adaptation of John le Carré’s The Night Manager in 2016 was the first television adaptation of a le Carré novel in 25 years. The screenwriter David Farr and the director Susanne Bier were licensed to change the locations of the adaptation to fit to those times between Spain and the Middle East. David Farr does the same here. The locations oscillate between Bangladesh, Delhi, Shimla and Sri Lanka and the story moves with the times to the illegal arms trade of the sub-continent. Released in seven Indian languages on Disney Plus Hotstar in India and Hulu in the United States, the show starts its narrative in a hotel in Bangladesh where our Night Manager, Shaan Sengupta ( Aditya Roy Kapur), who is an ex-veteran, works.
He comes across a 14 year old girl who is married to the majority owner of the hotel. As she reaches out to him for help to get back to India, she hands him over a video evidence of her rich, businessman husband, Freddie Rahman, being in cahoots with a huge illegal arms trade and one of the most elusive players in the industry, Shailendra Rungta, aka Shelly ( Anil Kapoor)
With that evidence, he reaches out to the Indian Embassy but as the news reaches the Bangladesh Desk at RAW named
Lipika Saikia( helmed by the inimitable Tilotama Shome), the news of the leak circles back to Freddie Rahman. With the little girl’s life in danger, Shaan rushes to save her life. But the killers get to her before he can and he fails to protect her.
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A few months later, when he is working at a property in Shimla, he comes across Shelly in flesh and bones. Using his proximity to him during his stay he is able to collect documentation and more details about him and send it to Lipika. After the Bangladesh incident Lipika has been demoted to RAW archives and though heavily pregnant is excited at the possibility of getting closer to the truth of Shelly’s ops. She begs her boss to circumvent funds to manage a low key operation for this and convinces Shaan to become a RAW asset by helping them collect more complicit intel about Shelly.
And then the action begins for Shaan to use his smarts and skills to infiltrate into the circles and proximity of Shelly’s personal and business life in Sri Lanka.
In it’s four episodes of smart editing and extremely good show making, the series is a binge at episodes of 40ish minutes each.
Aditya Roy Kapoor’s Shaan is suave, understated and definitely very convincing. Anil Kapoor’s Shelly mixes charm and menace in his very understated performance. Extremely impressive.
Tilotama Shome’s Lipika, who recruits Shaan and tries, not always successfully, to monitor and assist him, brings her natural flair to the role. Shobita Dhulipala brings oomph.
Published in 1993, “The Night Manager” was Mr. le Carré’s first post-Cold War novel, and you could see him working to fit new sorts of heroes and villains into his framework of murky loyalties and moral uncertainty. The Indian version dramatizes those elements well.
With the next part of the series, The Conclusion is slated to release in June 2023.
We recommend this series.
It streams on Hotstar on Hulu in North America
