Night moves

The Night Manager (BBC1, Sunday) announced its intentions immediately, when the opening credits lovingly combined weapons and luxury items. ‘Blimey,’ we were clearly intended to think, ‘it’s a bit like James Bond.’ True, the main character works — at this stage, anyway — in the hotel trade rather than as a secret agent. Yet, when it comes to dress sense, being irresistible to the ladies and alternating between looking suave and enigmatically purposeful, Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) has little to learn from the great man himself.

Pine was first seen heading to work in 2011 through an uprising in Cairo where dozens of extras were demanding the overthrow of President Mubarak. But once he’d arrived at the lavish Nefertiti hotel, it wasn’t long before a female guest sashayed towards him and gave the words, ‘Make me a coffee would you, Mr Pine,’ an unusual degree of erotic charge.

In fact, though, there was more to Sophie Alekan than just a slightly hammy sexpot. As the mistress (naturally) of an Egyptian playboy millionaire, she had written evidence that an entrepreneur called Richard Roper — aka ‘the worst man in the world’ — was planning to sell her boyfriend’s family enough weapons to crush the uprising. Luckily, Pine had a friend at the British embassy and so got the evidence circulated to every intelligence organisation in London. But then, proving that The Night Manager is indeed based on a book by John le Carré, and not by Ian Fleming, Roper was tipped off about the leak by a high-ranking mole. As a result, the deal was off — and poor Sophie had flirted her last…