When we left Shaan Sengupta sometime in February, he had taken a small step into the world of Shailendra ‘Shelly’ Rungta, with the giant ambition of bringing down his empire. The Indian adaptation of The Night Manager, based on the British show of the same name, which, in turn, drew its thrilling source material from the eponymously named John le Carré post-Cold War novel written three decades ago, took the unconventional route of having a mid-season break, choosing to come back with its remaining three episodes four months later.
Whether that was a good move or not will be evident from the viewership numbers as and when they make it to the public domain (or not), but the break did feel like a breach of trust for many viewers who spend their free time on a daily diet of binge-watching. I was one of them.
But now, having watched the final three episodes and in a position to analyse the series as a whole, I think the break was necessary, if not fully justified. The last episodes of The Night Manager do feel like a distinct departure, a turn of events from the first four. They have a different intent, a different set-up and a different identity — so also does Shaan, played by Aditya Roy Kapur, who is now christened Abhimanyu Mathur.
With each playing out over an hour, the final three episodes of The Night Manager — created by Sandeep Modi, written by Sridhar Raghavan and directed by Modi and Priyanka Ghose — hit the ground running. And yet, despite the urgency of Shaan/ Abhimanyu running against time to make good his infiltration of Shelly’s (played by Anil Kapoor) close circle and with the intent to decimate his flourishing arms empire, things drop to being strangely languid.
We have long stretches of Abhimanyu, now referred to as ‘Captain’ and Shelly brokering a huge arms deal, personal and professional equations being forged and broken, new romance raging (Sobhita Dhulipala’s Kaveri gets more scope than she did a few months ago) and old flame being snuffed out, corruption in the corridors of power, a heavily pregnant Lipika Saikia Rao (played by Tillotama Shome) sticking her neck out (quite literally) to bring Shelly to justice and Shaan being haunted by memories of the past. All of these are, of course, necessary to the plot, but quite a bit of it also feels disposable, making The Night Manager a tad bloated and often meandering.
Which kind of goes against the very grain of an espionage thriller. And more so against what The Night Manager promised in its initial run. Tracing the journey of a man wounded in soul and spirit from a hotel manager to a spy determined to bring down an international arms dealer for reasons both personal and not, we had the first half of the show succinctly contextualising the story, touching upon cross-border dynamics, political diplomacy being dictated by corrupt economic give-and-take and forces ready to bring the world to the edge of war.
A large part of the opening episode was set in Bangladesh and against the backdrop of the Rohingya refugee crisis, with the bloody protest spilling onto the streets of Dhaka and Shaan encountering the loss of a stranger that became a little too personal for him. His cross-continental journey, now as Abhimanyu as he attempts to beat Shelly at his own game even while playing it with him, brings the man back to where it all started. And it is in its seventh and final episode when the action shifts back to Dhaka after a superficial geographical run around the world, does The Night Manager pick up steam and ends with an explosive finale, even if it doesn’t come with the fireworks one would have expected.
The fireworks, in fact, come a little earlier, in the penultimate episode, when a huge weapons demo takes place by night in the middle of a desert in an unnamed Arab country, where mercenaries from all over the world gather to bid for the lot. The scene is telling — more than once, the series has a mention about how starting a war is a grenade away for its powerful players — and exposes the geo-political atmosphere of the times, but the ridiculousness of having belly dancers gyrating even as a deadly bomb lights up the night sky can’t be overlooked.
Still, for the major part, the final episode, more or less, ties up the loose ends, though why Shelly Rungta would trust a virtual stranger with practically all of his business and the whole of his money within the span of a few months is an illogicality that has no answers. But The Night Manager, for whatever it’s worth, cruises along well in its final moments, making a second season an eventuality. While I don’t mind it — a dishy Aditya Roy Kapur is always welcome — I really look forward to is a spin-off series with Tillotama’s Lipika. Maybe her as M, with ARK as her Bond? Now that’s an idea I love!
